


Running Up That Hill

by iwantthemtostay



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, discussion of the death of a child
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-10 01:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16461182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantthemtostay/pseuds/iwantthemtostay
Summary: "Unaware I'm tearing you asunder,There is thunder in our hearts."Louise isn't sure what she expected from her summer stay in Ilderton, but it wasn't Scott Moir, and it certainly wasn't his past and its consequences.





	1. The Man With the Child in His Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I had intended this entire work to be finished for Halloween, but in news that will come as no shock to anyone who has read my fic before (my apologies to the AU T&S who are still stuck in the metaphorical woods) that did not happen. But supernatural stories are enjoyable at any time of the year, right?!
> 
> The biggest of thank yous to M, do_not_confess, and peacefulboo, all of whose reactions to this idea were along the lines of "this is wild... but I'm intrigued." Thank you for all your help and patience with my spirals.
> 
> The work title and all chapter titles are Kate Bush song titles.

Later, Louise will think that meeting Scott in the Moir mausoleum should have been a red flag.

At the time though she’s too busy trying to breathe after the shock that anyone else had entered the old building. It’s eternally empty (of live humans anyway), the final resting place of the family that had run Ilderton before they lost everything when their railway company went bust sometime before the First World War. Even her grandma, who tends to all the forgotten graves in the cemetery, won’t come in here. She’s determined to keep alive the flames of the family grudge on behalf of whatever Hilborn ancestor was being courted by one of the Moir boys before he up and married a London girl. Now that she’s away on her natural healing retreat it’s Louise’s job to take care of the flower shop, and the cemetery, and all of her other community projects. So, the mausoleum is getting the attention it deserves.

It’s always fascinated her, from when she was a little girl on summer visits from Vancouver. This is the first time she’s been back in years, her most recent summers filled with internships and poorly-paid jobs rather than the flower shop and the Ilderton rink. She’d never minded helping her grandma in the cemetery, the gravestones and the people they harboured were all stories she wanted to know. And none were more intriguing than the mausoleum and its memorial to a family who’d put this little town on the map only to lose it all. The grandeur has faded, but Louise still thinks it’s beautiful, especially the simplest headstone it holds. This is the one she always finds herself lingering at, because it just speaks of so much sadness with its bare inscription – Joseph S. Moir, his wife Theresa, and their infant son Joseph James, January 1890. 

She’s trying to remove the lichen that’s growing in those chiselled letters when she hears footsteps. Is it dramatic to shriek? Yes, but the noise is so sudden she’s convinced that she’s about to be murdered right here in the Moir mausoleum and that her grandmother will consequently die of shame. 

“Miss? Are you alright?” The man who approaches her certainly doesn’t sound like a murderer, and when she turns around, shaking, he doesn’t look like one either. His eyes are much too kind. 

“Sorry – I’m so sorry for all the noise. I… I’ve never seen anyone else here before.” 

“It does look rather deserted. Are you a member of the family?” His voice sounds hopeful.

“Oh no, they’re long gone. That’s why the building is so… I’m just here to take care of it a little.”

“That’s very kind of you.” He smiles, and Louise thinks that he’s really much too handsome to be hanging around a graveyard on a Sunday afternoon. “One of them is back though, my side took off from the family a long time ago, but I’m still a Moir. My name is Scott, by the way.”

He puts out his hand, and she shakes it before remembering that she’s still wearing her soil-covered gloves. “I’m Louise… so sorry about all the mess!” 

Scott just smiles wider. “Don’t worry. I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

“It’s no problem.” She reaches down for her gardening basket, the same bright pink one her grandma had gifted her when she was eight. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He calls her name as she’s leaving and she turns. “I’ll see you around.”

 

Louise isn’t expecting Scott the next time he appears either. He comes into the flower shop on a Thursday evening, just as she’s getting truly immersed in _Villette_. The bell above the door is broken and she doesn’t notice anyone has entered until he’s right at the desk. 

“I’m so sorry to make you jump again. I’ve been told it’s rude to interrupt a lady’s reading.“ 

“Well, I should be working, so it’s me who should be apologising. What can I help you with?” 

“I’ve been thinking about the mausoleum.” He looks like it saddens him, which is very endearing. “I thought some flowers would be nice, to remember them by.”

Louise smiles. “Yes, I think that would be lovely.” She takes out the large handbook of arrangements her grandmother had given to her before she left, and hopes he doesn’t want anything too difficult. She’s still getting the hang of all of this. “Were you thinking about a wreath maybe?”

“Two bouquets actually. One of carnations, and one of peonies.” Scott seems very decisive. She likes that.

“Great, that will bring some brightness in there.” And will be much easier for her. “Have you been living in Ilderton for long?”

“No, my friends and I just moved a few weeks ago. Have you lived here your whole life?”

“Oh no, I’m from Vancouver. It’s my grandma who lives here, I’m just visiting.”

Pansy stalks in from the backroom and hisses at Scott before curling around her legs. The black cat usually doesn’t show any interest in customers whatsoever.

As she prepares the flowers he asks her about life at home, and she tells him about college. He’s a very intent listener, like he’s hanging on every word, and instead of it making her nervous she finds it strangely inviting. She ends up revealing more than she planned, telling him all about her mom’s plans for her to attend med school.

The bouquets are long prepared when she realises that for what seems like one of the first times in her life she’s only been talking about herself. “What about you? Are you here for the summer or have you moved permanently?” 

“I don’t really know yet. I’m living in the old Moir farmhouse…” he frowns, “or manor?”

“It went through some renovations once that railway money came in, I’m pretty sure. It looks like a hodgepodge from the outside.”

“You’ve never been inside?”

“I think it was more or less abandoned when I was here as a kid. People used to say it was haunted, I think I went through a phase of running past it.”

Scott laughs, and, oh, she’d like to hear that again. “You should come visit.”

She blushes, even though he’s probably just asking out of politeness, it’s not like he’s asking her out. “I’d like that.” 

The door opens, but it goes unnoticed by her because Scott asks, “Louise, would you like to meet up in a way that doesn’t involve me surprising you sometime? Um, we could go for coffee?” His hands are in his pockets and his expression is so earnest.

Louise can’t tell if the way her heart’s beating has to do with his question or the fact that the first boy she ever loved is now loitering at the back of the shop. 

It’s probably because of Scott, right?

“Yes, I’d like that.” She grabs one of the company cards and writes her number on the back. 

He murmurs, “Good, great,” and grins at her as he backs away from the counter. He nods to Colin on his way out, and then it’s just the two of them.

“Lulu!” Colin beams, and it’s like her brain is trying to take in so much information at once that it’s overloading – he recognises her, he remembers that old nickname, he truly did fulfil and surpass all that adolescent promise of handsomeness. 

“You remembered.” It’s not much more than a mumble, but he hears it.

"How could I forget the first girl I ever kissed?” Shit, gorgeous hazel-eyed men asking you out has nothing on the deep blue-eyed ones you used to obsess over remembering basic facts. 

“I might have changed I guess, or…” Why can’t her voice sound… normal, like it did when she was speaking with Scott?

Colin raises his eyebrows a little. “Same red hair? Same green eyes? Working in your grandma’s shop? Even if my memory was terrible I think I could have pieced this together. I know I was never as smart as you, but…”

“Hey, that’s not true.”

“One of us went to college and the other turned down a scholarship and went to play in the junior leagues… not a spectacular decision.”

She hadn’t heard that that choice didn’t end well. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out.” 

“Yeah.” He shrugs, “It was a bit of a shock to go from being the best to just being mediocre. I should probably have handled it better.” 

Louise’s throat burns a little. “What are you doing now?”

“Coaching, kids mainly. I love it, or I do most of the time. I’m travelling around doing summer camps, I got lucky being at home for Mom’s birthday.” He gestures around, “That’s why I’m here actually. I was hoping to get something for her.” 

She starts flicking through the arrangement handbook again. “You’ll have to tell her happy birthday from me.” 

“I’m surprised she didn’t tell me that you were in town.”

Louise is too, she doesn’t think anything happens in Ilderton that Carol MacCormack doesn’t know about. She’s pausing on a page with a bouquet that’s dahlia dominated when she sees a note her grandma had left her. “Apparently this is the one I have to make for your mom’s birthday.” 

“Helena knows I come looking for one every year, usually at the last minute.” Her grandma could have made a note about that too.

She asks him more about his coaching job while she gathers the flowers. Colin tries to help her arrange them, but he clearly knows even less than she does. In the end it turns out well, or at least she thinks it’s pretty. Talking to Colin is different than talking to Scott, easier because she already knows him, and yet difficult sometimes because everything feels more… serious, she supposes. She doesn’t understand how that could be so, they were just people who kissed at the Ilderton Summer Fair when they were teenagers, but when she looks into his eyes there’s this _pull_. Maybe it’s just her imagination, he probably senses nothing of the sort.

Except after they’re finished with the bouquet (long after she’s meant to have closed up), he is so sincerely disappointed about going away for the next few weeks, and bashful all of a sudden about asking for her number. She gives it to him of course, but she wonders if she’s going to be free to meet up with him in six weeks, at least in the way he seems to want, or if she and Scott will be something.

It just seems easier – dating a guy she’s just met rather than one she used to think hung the moon, the stars, and maybe some flying comets. With Scott she can have a summer fling, the last time she’d kissed Colin she’d ended up crying over missing him for three months, who knows what leaving after the possibility of something more would do to her. Dating Scott is less risky. Uncomplicated.

 

It’s uncomplicated on their first date, their second, their third, and a whole bunch after that. It’s uncomplicated as he introduces her to his roommates – friendly and funny Patrick, friendly and quiet Andrew, and friendly and not-so-quiet Kaitlyn (who sometimes seems not so fond of Scott). It’s uncomplicated as they kiss, and inch closer to something more. Scott’s a gentleman – opens doors, lets her take the lead. It’s a nice change of pace to the other guys she’d dated. It’s fun, and it’s sweet, and it’s easy. 

 

It’s uncomplicated right up until the evening in the woods. 

Louise should never have agreed to her grandma’s demand that she had to pick the bluebead lilies at twilight, how was that actually going to help their potency in whatever new herbal remedy she was preparing to attempt? She wasn’t even returning from wherever the retreat is being held for weeks yet! But Louise couldn’t say no after she felt she’d already let down her mom and her great-grandma. Her mom still wasn’t overly pleased with the decision to go to Ilderton for the summer, and she’d made that clear when they talked on the phone. 

Things with her great-grandma were more immediate. Louise tries to visit her regularly at the nursing home, but she can never seem to give her what she wants. A few days ago she had handed Louise some bulbs (where she’d managed to get them was beyond her), but when Louise had returned with them planted in a little flowerpot she had become so frustrated. The stroke had badly affected her speech, but she could still sing old songs she remembered. Neither Louise or any of the nurses knew the songs though, and that seemed to make her so sad. Louise just wants to make her happy. 

She’d tried to talk to her grandma about it on the phone but the connection was so poor that all she could get from the conversation was the request to pick the bluebead lily bulbs. They were thankfully easy to find, and the woods were pretty in this light, so it wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening. Scott was in London for some information night on training to be a fireman (her mom had brightened up a little at that piece of news, saying that at least he wasn’t “one of those wannabe tortured artist types you usually date.”), otherwise she would have asked him to come with her. He seems to like the outdoors. Louise likes the outdoors fine, she just prefers to be sitting out with a book, or gardening in a contained space with plants she knows won’t poison her. At least there are no weird animal sounds, although the absence of animal sounds entirely is eerie in itself. Surely there should be some rustling somewhere? 

There’s something almost hypnotic about the stillness as she winds her way down the hilly path. It makes the world seem clearer, the bright green of the grass and leaves against the blues, pinks, and purples of the wildflowers. She’s trying to identify the flowers (crowfoot, periwinkle, scilla) when she finds herself in a clearing.

There’s a man in black bent over a deer that’s lying prone on the ground. The deer seems to be injured because there’s red blood seeping into the brown earth below. It’s oddly reminiscent of the scene in _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ with Voldemort and the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, and odder again the man looks so familiar.

“Scott?” she calls. What is he doing here and why is he… attempting to resuscitate a woodland creature? Or maybe he’s… She doesn’t have any time to come up with other possible explanations when her boyfriend turns around, and she sees him wiping droplets of blood from his mouth. His incisor teeth are weirdly prominent, almost like… no, that can’t be. These things aren’t supposed to be real. Louise doesn’t run away, she doesn’t think her legs are strong enough for that. She stumbles a little, the back of her legs hitting a fallen tree on the ground, and she sinks down, the bark pricking her legs where her leggings end. 

She puts her head between her knees and tries to remember all those tips about panic attacks - focus on breathing out? Something about grounding yourself? But how is she meant to ground herself in a world which isn’t making any sense at all right now? 

“Louise?” 

His feet are coming towards her. “Stay there!” she orders. “I need… please, stay there.”

He does as she asks. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”

“Oh, is that what you said to- to Bambi?” She’s still gasping for air. “Can you, can you, just- this is some weird, weird, like, role-play or something? You’re really into _Harry Potter_ or, or…” She doesn’t want to say _Twilight_. “You’re not… you can’t be…”

“I am.” 

Louise lifts her head up to find Scott sitting down on the grass in front of her, a short distance away. He looks so normal, so safe. “Are you- is it possible… Can you please tell me what you are?”

“I’m a vampire.”

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and the sound that comes out of her mouth is some hysterical mixture of the two. “A vampire. I’m dating a vampire. What happens next, you kill me to protect your secret?”

“No, Louise, I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.” A part of her believes him. “I didn’t want you to find out like this, or at all. This isn’t the life I wanted.” 

She looks into his eyes then, and she isn’t prepared for the amount of pain they hold. It almost makes her reach out to comfort him. “How did it… Have you, ah, been this way for long?”

“128 years.”

“Jesus Christ! 128 _years_?! And you’re still dating girls in their twenties?”

“I’m still 22,” he says calmly. “Maybe I’ve grown up a little, but… Andrew thinks we’re stuck where we were developmentally when we were turned, not just physically.”

“Andrew thinks? So Andrew… Oh God, you’re all vampires.” Scott nods. “I’ve been hanging out with a crowd of vampires!” And as frightening as this information is, it’s also calming. “None of you have tried to… whatever it is you do to me. Yet,” she admits. 

“We wouldn’t. None of us drink human blood anymore. I’m, obviously,” he gestures back towards the unfortunate deer, “on animal blood, and the rest are on a synthetic human blood. Patrick helped develop it actually, it uses ice…”

“Scott. I do not care about the production process for synthetic human blood.” She wants to wake up. This has to be a dream. Or could the plants she picked have some hallucinogenic properties? 

“Yeah, sorry, of course not.”

If she’s not waking or sobering up anytime soon she may as well ask some more questions. “Why don’t you, uh, use the synthetic stuff?”

“It’s too close to the real thing. I can’t… handle my intake as I should.”

Handle his intake of human blood. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_. There’s probably blood on her legs from where they’ve pricked against the tree she’s sitting on. 

“It’s not like that,” he says softly. “It’s not that I can’t control myself when I smell it or anything, it’s more that once I start… It’s difficult to stop.” He hurries to add, “I haven’t… you know…”

“Killed anyone?”

“No. Not like that.” At her intake of breath he explains, “I was a soldier. First and Second World Wars.”

He’s so old, but yet he looks so very young and lost. “I haven’t had any human blood in over three years, and I’ve gone longer before.” Scott closes his eyes. “I lost everything when I was turned. Everything I cared about, everyone I loved. And I guess I didn’t much care what happened to me so I didn’t care about how I fed, or about trying to control it. I hated it. I still… And maybe that’s why I never got good at managing it.” He rubs his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt people.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, because she is. He’s not broken in front of her, but it’s like she can see the joints where he’s been patched up. She can’t be frightened of someone who’s trying so hard to do the right thing. 

“I can make you forget all about this, if you want.” If she was really dreaming would there be an option to forget? “Compel you to think that this never happened. I don’t like doing it, but I think in this case it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.” His skin is ashen now, almost authentically vampiric. Except judging from her recent interactions with vampires the image of pale and waxen isn’t true at all. The only common feature between Scott and his roommates’ complexions is that they’re blemish-free. “I’d make you forget about dating me too,” he frowns, “I wouldn’t trick you.” 

The one thing that Louise knows for sure is that Scott is _good_ , in that old-fashioned, childhood sense. He helps elderly ladies with their groceries, he sits with her in the backroom of the flower shop while she muddles through the recipes for the natural remedies her grandma sells, he’s patient when she talks about her mom. She trusts him. After all the kindness he’s shown her would it not be callous to want to forget his pain, to try and live a life where him sharing it with her never happened?

“I don’t think I want to forget.” He startles at this. “Unless you have to or else the vampire security council will or something.”

Scott laughs, and it’s nice to hear such a warm sound from him again. “We’re not that connected as a community, no one is going to come knocking.”

“I won’t tell anyone, you know.”

“I know. I trust you.” He shrugs, “And even if you did, well… would you have believed me if I’d just told you about it and you hadn’t seen it for yourself?”

She’d sooner have believed him telling her that he’d stopped supporting the Leafs. 

A bird sings and she notices how dark it’s getting. “We should go home.” She rises from the tree trunk, dusts herself off, and holds out her hand. 

Scott stares for a second, then takes her hand and gets up. She keeps her hand in his as they make their way through the woods. They’re a little scary in the dark, and if she’s learned one useful piece of information tonight it’s that he could probably take care of any predators. 

“You should try and get animals other than deer,” she instructs as they come closer to the outskirts of town. “I like deer.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” They walk a little further. “You’re weirdly calm about all of this.”

She really doesn’t feel all that calm, her stomach feels like it’s the first semester of her freshman year and she’s just discovered sambuca. “I think I’m still waiting to wake up.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he says softly.

“Yeah, I guess not.” When they reach the flower shop she turns to face him. “You’re still you. I don’t… I don’t understand all of this, but I know you. And I don’t want to, uh, abandon this, or you I suppose, over a part of you that you didn’t choose.”

It’s not the most eloquent of speeches, but Scott seems to appreciate it. “Okay. That’s-that’s, thank you. So much.” 

Louise starts to unlock the door. “I’ll see you…”

“Tomorrow? For that dinner with Patrick, Andrew, and Kaitlyn? Or not. Whenever you want is good.”

She’d forgotten all about that meal Scott was going to cook for them. Do they even need to eat? “No, tomorrow is fine. I’ll see you then.” 

He waits to leave until she’s finished locking up. Pansy is waiting for her on the counter, and she swears the cat has never looked more judgemental. 

“Are you trying to tell me dating a vampire isn’t smart?” She snorts at the ridiculousness of this as she scoops her up, but then again if vampires are indeed real maybe the idea that cats can sense them isn’t that outlandish. 

“I really suck at easy breezy summer romance, huh?” Pansy curls into her and she takes that as a yes. 

 

Any last remaining hopes that it was all a dream die the next morning when Louise wakes up and it’s all still there in her head, and are even more conclusively dashed at dinner that evening when Patrick and Kaitlyn joke about it like it’s nothing. They seem more relaxed around her now, though Andrew is still quiet. Apparently he’s very old, so maybe he’s just done more than enough talking already. She learns that vampires do still need more conventional sources of nourishment, and tries not to laugh when Kaitlyn wonders about becoming a vegetarian. 

They stay up talking and drinking wine until it’s well after midnight and Louise is almost falling asleep on the couch. Patrick tells her that she should stay and Scott offers to make up a bed for her in one of the spare rooms, which she’s grateful for. She’s still attracted to him, absolutely, but finding out your boyfriend is a centuries old vampire does kind of put a brake on things. It also maybe explains why he seemed so content with taking it slowly, is she going to have to ask him what his opinions on sex outside marriage are? And then there’s the whole question of whether vampire super-strength is real and how that might affect matters. Or it could be that she’s just been much too influenced by her multiple teenage rereads of the _Twilight_ saga. 

She tries to open the wrong door at first when she follows him upstairs after saying goodnight to the others. It’s locked, and she can’t help but drop to her knees and peer through the keyhole to make sure this isn’t a Bluebeard situation. All she sees is ordinary bedroom furniture, maybe Victorian era. 

“Louise? Are you okay?” Scott steadies her when she almost falls over trying to get back up.

“Yes. Sorry, I thought this was the right room and then the door was locked and, uh…”

“You wanted to check it wasn’t where we hid the bodies?” His eyes are twinkling and she can’t help but think it’s a little too soon for that joke.

“Basically, yeah.” 

He runs a hand through his hair. “It was my room, before.”

“ _Oh_.”

His eyes are firmly directed towards the floor. “I want to tell you about it, sometime. But I’m not quite ready for that yet.” 

“That’s okay.” She hugs him quickly before she has time to overthink it all. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

It’s objectively the afternoon when she sees him next. Sleeping in a house chock-full of vampires had struck her as a very foolish idea the minute she laid her head on the pillow, and she’d run through all the scenarios of her impending doom until the wee hours when exhaustion had taken over. Her fears seemed silly in the daylight, and sillier still when she walked downstairs to find Scott in the kitchen making breakfast for her. The others had gone out for supplies (which she’s willing to bet means blood, or synthetic blood to be precise), so it’s just them. When Scott tells her he’s going for a run she asks if that’s a euphemism, and he laughs and tells her no. 

She showers while he’s away and the system is so antiquated that it leaves her wondering if anyone in the house uses it, or if vampires even need to wash themselves. It’s as she’s towel-drying her hair that the sound of the old door-knocker echoes through the house. 

Louise hurries downstairs and opens the heavy wooden door to find two women on the porch. One is elderly and up until two days ago she would have assumed that the other is her own age, but now she knows better. It’s not just the unfairly perfect skin that reminds her of the people she now knows to be vampires, there’s some kind of poise or elegance about this woman that is not of this time. 

The elderly woman frowns. “You’re not Kaitlyn.” 

“No, Kaitlyn’s out at the minute, but she should be home soon. I’m Louise.” 

“Eleanor Jordan.” Her handshake is surprisingly firm for someone who looks quite frail.

“And I’m Tessa.” The younger woman smiles and Louise can see a resemblance between the two. “We’re friends of Kaitlyn and Andrew’s.”

“Would you like to come inside and wait for them?” 

Tessa goes to take Eleanor’s arm but is swatted away. “I’m old and tired, not an invalid.”

“I know you’re not.” The reply has a resigned patience to it, like it’s an exchange they’ve had many times.

“We have had a long trip, I would like to freshen up.”

Louise takes this as a request to direct Eleanor to the bathroom, and does so. 

“Is Patrick around?” Tessa asks.

“No, he’s out with Kaitlyn and Andrew. Scott should be back soon though, he’s out for a run.” She realises that she really shouldn’t assume that they all know one another. “Scott Moir that is, do you know him?”

Tessa tugs on the delicate gold chain around her neck, pulling it further under the neckline of her white blouse. “Yes, I know Scott.”

Louise hears footsteps coming up the gravel path. “That’s probably him now.”

Tessa’s smile is more fixed than natural all of a sudden, and it’s like she’s steeling herself as the footsteps come up the stairs and over the porch.

There’s a pause before Scott opens the door and Tessa’s name is out of his mouth before he even should be able to see her. It’s a colder tone than Louise thinks she’s ever heard from him.

“Your hair’s longer,” Tessa says. Scott looks unimpressed. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Well, you know it’s my house.” He’s so terse. 

“Kaitlyn never mentioned that you’d be staying here with them.”

“Figures. Are you making a surprise visit?”

“More of an emergency one.” Tessa looks back to her, and it’s the first time either of them have even seemed aware of her existence since the moment Scott stepped inside. “Would you mind if I spoke to Scott in private?”

“Louise knows everything.” There’s this edge of something like triumphalism in his voice, and it makes her uncomfortable.

Tessa’s eyes widen. “Oh, I see.” She takes a breath. “I angered Didier Gailhaguet and he’s threatening Eleanor, she’s my sister Jane’s granddaughter.” Louise assumes this explanation is for her benefit, and tries not to seem surprised. “He knows where we live so I needed to take her somewhere safe, with people I trust while I… deal with the matter.”

“Of course we’ll keep her safe here, but…”

Louise is distracted from her surprise at how readily Scott agrees to this after all the tension by Eleanor’s voice. “So this is Uncle Scott.”

Tessa and Scott wince in tandem, but don’t seem prepared to make any verbal response. “Are you all related then?” Louise asks, sounding a lot cheerier than she’s feeling.

“I suppose we are, after a fashion,” Eleanor replies. “I’m related to Tessa by blood, and then to Scott through their marriage.”

“I’m sorry?” Surely she can’t have heard that right.

“I’m related to Scott by marriage. Tessa and Scott’s marriage.”

Louise is certain that she knows nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Happy Halloween?! I'd love to hear what you think, either here or on tumblr where you can find me under the same name :)


	2. Wuthering Heights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to M, do_not_confess, and peacefulboo for all their help and advice, and to toomucherin for her medical expertise!

“We’re not married anymore.” Tessa is shaking her head so emphatically that her glossy dark ponytail is flowing from side to side. “You don’t need to worry.”

Louise is concerned that her mouth might be hanging open.

“You told that man on the aeroplane that you were married.”

Tessa shoots Eleanor one of those glances universally given to older (though in this case somehow also younger) relatives who say things that would be better left unsaid. “That was just to get him to leave me alone. I didn’t tell him I was married to a specific someone. And I wasn’t wearing…” She turns back to Louise, “Anyway, we’re not married. We died, so… Scott’s a widower I suppose.” Her smile is apologetic, and nowhere near reaching her eyes.

The only sound is the ticking of the grandfather clock until Eleanor asks if she could rest after their journey.

“Of course,” Scott says, seemingly jolted back into reality and now looking at other people rather than staring into the distance. “The bedrooms are all upstairs, is that…”

“That will be fine,” Tessa interjects before Eleanor, who’s looking very offended, can say anything. “We’re very grateful.”

“There are spare rooms in the part of the house that was extended, or the room where we… The key is above the door. I can help you with bedlinen or…”

“Unless there have been drastic changes I still remember where everything is kept.” A silence lingers. “Let’s get you settled in, Eleanor, and then I’ll get the suitcases from the car.”

“The car?!” Scott asks.

“Yes,” Tessa answers primly. “I rented one at the airport.”

“And did you cause any damage or injuries on your way here?” Louise can’t tell if Scott is being snarky or is genuinely concerned.

“I passed my driving test in France! Legally!”

“It took her three attempts,” Eleanor informs them.

“A lot of people have to try and pass a few times.” Louise can’t tell who’s more surprised she’s spoken, herself or everyone else.

Tessa smiles at her, and then puts a gentle hand on Eleanor’s back and guides her up the stairs.

Louise listens to Eleanor asking Tessa about when she can take her medication until the voices recede and she looks up at Scott. “So…”

He inclines his head towards the living room and they head in, sitting on chairs across the room from each other.

She’s staring down at her hands and inspects her nails to see if the pale pink Essie polish had chipped earlier in the shower. “I know you said last night that you weren’t able to talk to me about your past yet, and that’s fine, but… I think you could have at least told me that you had a, an ex-wife who is living, or undead or whatever, and could show up here.”

“I haven’t seen her in years. Not that that… you’re right. I should have told you.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Louise,” she looks up at him, “you don’t need to worry about Tessa, you know,” he waves his hand a little, “drinking your blood.”

That fear hadn’t crossed her mind, which makes her think she’s getting much too comfortable with hanging out with vampires. “That’s, uh, good to know.”

“She probably has the best control of anyone I’ve ever met. She was Chiddy’s guinea pig for his synthetic blood.” He’s wringing his hands now, she doesn’t think he’s stopped moving them since they came into the room. “That’s probably not what you’re interested in hearing about though.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” But she really wants to know.

Scott sits back in his chair. “We were very young, even for back then. She was nineteen, and I was twenty-one, and we hadn’t known each other for very long. It was…” his mouth thins a little, “a mutually beneficial match for our families.” He shifts in his seat. “We didn’t have much in common. We were married for little over a year and then - I woke up a vampire. The man who turned me… he said he was some French nobleman, but who even knows, he could have easily been just a conman from Quebec. He and Tessa had been seeing each other, or however you want to describe it, and I guess she felt guilty or something because she asked him to turn me after he turned her, before she went away with him. I hated her,” he says dully, “for making me that way.”

The whole speech is so brisk that Louise feels like she has a slight case of whiplash by the end. “That’s… that must have been horrible.”

Scott doesn’t say anything in response, and she goes back to examining her nails. The thumb on her right hand needs a fresh coat. She doesn’t know how to continue this conversation. It’s not that she doesn’t believe him, it’s just that it’s painfully obvious there’s a lot more to this tale. And she can’t be sure whether he’s not telling her because it’s too much for him, because he thinks it could be too much for her, or if he simply can’t remember or doesn’t know or understand. The one part that really defies belief is the idea that Tessa, or any woman, would have asked her vampire lover to make the husband she was abandoning immortal out of some sense of guilt. That could only maybe make sense if she hated him, and from watching her earlier Louise feels pretty confident that Tessa does not hate Scott Moir.

“You don’t have to dislike her on my behalf or anything. That all happened a very long time ago. We’ve worked together, we have friends in common. It’s fine.” It’s clearly not fine.

“She came here looking for Kaitlyn and Andrew, is she close with them?”

“Yes, very. She met Andrew around the same time I did, and she was the first vampire Kaitlyn met other than whoever turned her. I don’t know the ins and outs but I think Kaitlyn had a lot of trouble adjusting afterwards. The way she tells it Tessa is the reason she made it through.” Scott stops speaking when steps are heard coming down the stairs.

Just as Louise turns around to see Tessa enter the hallway the front door opens. Before she can even blink Kaitlyn is hugging Tessa.

“I didn’t know you were coming!! Is Eleanor with you? How are you?! I’ve missed you so much!”

“Let her breathe, Kait.” Andrew is the next to hug her, lifting her up off her feet.

Patrick’s embrace is more formal, but still warm. “It’s been too long, Tessa. When did I see you last? 2014 in Sochi?”

“The year after, 2015.” Scott has got up and is leaning against the doorframe of the living room.

Patrick’s eyes go very wide. “Oh yes, of course.”

Kaitlyn is looking a little stressed. “Did I, uh, forget to mention that Scott was living here too? That was silly of me!” This situation is so freaking weird.

Tessa raises her eyebrows at her and laughs. Until her face crumples and she starts to cry.

“It’s okay, it won’t be awkward!” Kaitlyn is rubbing Tessa’s back and frowning at Scott over her head. Tessa just cries harder.

Scott coughs. “That’s not what’s upsetting her. Didier Gailhaguet made a threat to hurt Eleanor, so they’re going to stay with us for a while.”

“What?” Andrew goes to comfort Tessa as well.

Louise feels like she should really leave, but she isn’t sure how to go about that without drawing too much attention to herself.

“Could he have found out about Tatiana asking you to kill him after that whole mess in Salt Lake?” Kaitlyn asks. _What the fuck?_

Tessa brushes away tears. “That might not have helped matters if he knows, but it’s not because of it. It’s because of a book.”

Kaitlyn guides her over to a couch in the living room and she and Andrew sit on either side of her. Patrick takes the chair beside them and Scott perches on the armrest beside Louise.

“A book?” Andrew prompts gently, producing a delicate handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to Tessa.

“I don’t know where to begin. I’m not sure if you all know this,” no matter what is going to come out of Tessa’s mouth next, Louise is certain that it will be news to her, “but I actually knew him before he was turned. When I was working for the SOE in France during the war he was a member of the same resistance network I was involved in.” Tessa says all this in the manner Louise might tell a story about a time she went to a fancy hair salon, something a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing outlandish. “Or, he helped out at least. He was a small-time criminal, he did some smuggling for us. So I was very surprised when I heard about a new book about the resistance in Provence that was very focused on the heroic exploits of one Didier Gailhaguet. I read it, and the brave things I remembered being done by other people were all being attributed to him. And, naturally, being in the possession of a great many letters and diaries which recorded quite different facts, I made copies and sent them to the author of the book and all the major national and regional newspapers.”

“Couldn’t you have let it be?” Scott asks. There’s a touch of exhaustion to his tone.

“I just wanted to do the right thing. I never thought he’d find out about it. I was so stupid… I had them couriered from the jewellers where I help out occasionally, and he or one of his minions must have got hold of some records and come to the village.” Her voice lowers to a ragged whisper, “It was just a note on some monogrammed stationary that came through the door. Pretty gold filigree heading, elegant penmanship, but the message was so,” her voice quietens again, “graphic.”

“That’s horrible, Tessa.” Patrick shakes his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised he’d react like that to a threat to his reputation, but I’m so sorry this is happening to you and Eleanor. What are you planning to do?”

“I don’t really have a plan yet. I was so busy setting up false trails for anyone who might come looking to follow before we came that I’ve hardly had time to consider the next steps.” She folds the handkerchief. “I’d prefer to settle this without any violence, but I’m afraid that won’t be an option. I need to find some witches in the eventuality that… a permanent end to the issue is required.”

Witches. Of course witches exist too.

“You know a tonne of witches: Yuna, Carolina, Mao – they’d do anything to help you.” Kaitlyn is resting her head on top of Tessa’s.

“I need two who work well together, Didier has a pair he keeps with him at all times. I’ve been contacting people in the U.S., so I’ll have to fly down in the next few days to meet them in person.” Tessa’s hand reaches for the chain around her neck. “I want to stay here until Eleanor settles in. She’s been quite forgetful lately, and she was so confused after the flight.”

“Earlier you said that you wanted her to be with people you trusted while you took care of things… are you going to try and deal with him alone? Other than the witches I mean?” Scott sounds sceptical.

“I’ve killed much more dangerous men than Didier.”

Louise bites her tongue to stop herself from gasping. She knew that had to the eventuality Tessa was preparing for, but she’s killed multiple dangerous men? Who are worse creatures than ones who send handwritten death threats to elderly ladies?

“Yes, but you had people with you then.”

“Not always.” There’s an intensity to the way Scott and Tessa look at each other, and it both pulls her in and pushes her away.

“We can talk about this again, after you work things out with the witches.”

Tessa straightens up. “I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions.”

“Oh, we all know that.” Louise thinks she’s heard bitterness in Scott’s voice more often in the past three days than in all the time she’d known him before she found out he was a vampire.

Kaitlyn is about to reply, but Tessa squeezes her arm.

Andrew starts to speak in that calm, measured way he has. “We know that you’re very experienced, Tessa, but nobody wants you to take any unnecessary risks. Why don’t you just wait it out here?”

“Didier isn’t the type to forgive and forget. And I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.” Tessa looks up at Louise. “I am so sorry for bringing all of this into your life.” She means it. And the reality of a clear and present danger begins to settle into Louise’s bones.

“I know you didn’t mean to,” Louise is struggling to think of something suitable to say. “You’re just trying to protect your family.”

Tessa dabs at her eyes with the handkerchief. “I should get our things from the car.” She rises, and Kaitlyn and Andrew follow in her wake.

“Car?” Patrick repeats. “Is Eleanor still driving?”

“I am.” Tessa frowns, “Did I forget to include you in the email about me passing my test?”

“If you read it, you’d remember. I didn’t know font could get that large.” Andrew still seems in wonder at this.

“And it was right after I had an ‘I’m a vampire who can’t drive’ t-shirt made for her,” Kaitlyn sighs.

As the four of them leave the room Tessa tries to explain the reference to Patrick.

Scott puts his hand on Louise’s shoulder. “How are you dealing with all of… this?”

There’s a lot of _this_. So much that it makes her head hurt. “Tessa has had a busy life. Being a spy, killing dangerous vampires.”

“The former probably helped prepare for the latter.”

“I guess. Who is this Didier guy?” She’d like to know a little more about the man who could potentially come and try and kill them all. Or just a frail old lady, which is bad enough.

“He’s a politician I suppose. Big name in the IVU – the International Vampire Union.”

“What do you need a union for – better hours at the synthetic blood plant?”

Scott grins. “It’s not that kind of union. But speaking of synthetic blood, Didier used to own a company that made it, there was a big scandal when it turned out to be… not so synthetic.”

“Is that the Salt Lake thing Patrick was talking about?”

“Yes,” Scott answers, impressed. “You picked up a lot.”

“I’m a good listener.”

“You are.” He goes to sit on the coffee table in front of the chair they’re sharing. “Didier, from what I’ve heard, is pretty focused on whatever task he sets for himself. So even if he does show up here… I don’t think you’ll be in any danger.” He takes her hands in his. “I’ll make sure you’re not.”

“Thank you.” She squeezes his hands quickly. “I should probably get going, I have the Patterson wedding next week and I want to practise the arrangements.” She wants to get out of this house.

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Scott looks rather forlorn.

She starts to make her way out of the room but turns back. “You could come hang out with me at the flower shop. Anytime you like over the next few days. You know, in case things get awkward here.” From the small interactions she’d witnessed Scott and Tessa came across as a combustible combination.

He smiles, “Thank you, Louise. That would be great.”

The next few days are surprisingly normal, like things were before she found out Scott was a vampire with a beautiful ex-wife. Although now Scott tells her random facts about vampires when he’s sitting in the workshop with her as well as listening to her talk about her friend Chloe’s trip to China. It’s a bit lonely dating a vampire when there’s no one you can tell about it. When she’s not working or with Scott, Louise visits her great-grandmother and continues with her grandma’s volunteering. There are endless organisational meetings for the Ilderton Summer Fair, a committee Carol MacCormack runs with a kind but firm hand. She keeps dropping pointed comments that Colin will be coming home soon. Louise tries not to think about the irony of her belief that dating Scott would be less complicated than dating him, or just about anyone.

On the morning Tessa comes into the shop Scott is away with Patrick. Louise startles when she sees her walk in the door. She hasn’t been to the Moir house since Tessa and Eleanor arrived, but has heard from Scott that they’ve been spending a lot of time with Kaitlyn and Andrew.

“Hello, Louise,” Tessa smiles. Her hair is done up in a gorgeous crown braid. “Could I have a dozen red roses, please? They’re for Andrew, it’s his and Kaitlyn’s anniversary.”

“Sure.” Louise puts her book down on the counter and goes to fetch the flowers. “How long have they been together?”

Tessa thinks for a moment. “Twenty-one years.” She looks down at the counter, and then exclaims, “Oh, I love the _The Age of Innocence_! I met Edith Wharton once, it’s my claim to fame.”

“Really?!” She hopes she doesn’t seem over-excited, but Tessa appears to understand her enthusiasm.

“It was during the First World War, when she was travelling around France. She wanted to interview nurses, I don’t think anything I said ended up in her articles. I was desperate to say something intelligent about her writing to impress her, but in the end I got so flustered and told her that I’d never cried more at any book than at _The House of Mirth_.” She pauses, “That’s still true now though, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to say.”

“It is very… ow!” Louise is still getting pricked by roses after months on the job. She fishes for the first aid kit under the counter. There’s more blood than usual.

“Here, let me.” Tessa opens the stubborn lid and then quickly applies the rubbing alcohol and antiseptic cream before placing a bandage on the wounded finger. “You’re very calm for someone who’s having a known vampire attend to their injury.”

“You did just say you were a nurse during the First World War,” was there anything Tessa hadn’t done? “so if you could handle that I presumed you’d be good with this.”

She laughs, “One would hope.”

“And Scott said not to worry about anything like that,” she admits.

“Oh, did he say you weren’t my type? That I only feed on sleazy older men?” Tessa’s busying herself with tidying up the first aid supplies, and while she’s trying to be humorous there’s too much bite to her questions, like she can’t quite give them the necessary lightness.

“No, he said that you had the best control of any vampire he knew.”

“That was unfair of me.” Tessa closes her eyes. “Sometimes I think it’s easier if I try to forget how kind he is.” She shakes her head briskly and the sadness leaves her voice, “I’m sorry, you don’t want to talk to me about all of that. How much will that be?”

“Oh, no charge. They’re for friends.”

“Kaitlyn and Andrew are the best friends to have.”

Louise thinks that in some other world she would have really liked to be Tessa’s friend, too. “I love your hair,” she blurts out. “Did you do it yourself?”

“Yes, I did,” Tessa blushes. “I had a lot of practice doing my sister’s when I was younger, and then Eleanor’s as she grew up.”

“Did you see a lot of Eleanor growing up?” Louise asks as she wraps up the roses.

“I lived with them for twelve years. My sister, her grandmother, raised her after her mother passed away. Her father had died in the war. We didn’t tell her who, or what, I really was, we said I was a distant cousin. Of course I had to leave eventually, staying in one place invites too many questions.”

“That must have been difficult.” Scott said that he lost his family after being turned, but Tessa seems to have managed to keep hers.

“It was. I hadn’t been that happy in a very long time, but then I went to university which was something I had always dreamed of doing.”

“Where did you go?” Louise wouldn’t mind hearing the entirety of Tessa’s life story.

“Cambridge, in England.” As if that wasn’t immediately obvious. She leans in closer to Louise, “Andrew may have forged some papers that helped me get in. I studied Literature.”

“I wanted to major in Lit, but my mom wants me to be a doctor.”

“My mother wanted me to get married, I don’t think it turned out quite the way she planned.”

Louise laughs, even though she’s not quite sure she should, but when Tessa joins in her laugh is infectious.

Pansy appears from the workshop and hops onto the counter, eyeballing Tessa before offering her head to her to pet.

“May I?” Tessa asks.

Louise nods. “She doesn’t like Scott at all.” She still hisses whenever he shows up.

“She must know that I’m a cat person. He prefers dogs, maybe she sees that as a character defect.” Pansy purrs as Tessa strokes her.

After Tessa has shown her photos of her cats back in France, and told her about her part-time job dating and cleaning antique jewellery, she leaves with the bouquet, and Louise is left with the odd sensation that she has learned more about Tessa’s life in the past half hour that she has about Scott’s in all the time she’s known him. Whatever Tessa did over a century ago, or whoever she was as a person back then, Louise can’t help but warm to who she is now.

She tries to find out more about Scott when he phones her that evening but all she gets out of him is that he was in the air force during World War Two and stayed on for a few years afterwards. He seems a bit out of sorts, but he invites her for dinner at the house the next day.

It’s her day to tidy the cemetery and she finds herself missing her grandma’s comments about each and every family. It’s not only the bad coverage that’s preventing her from talking to her now, she hasn’t told her about Scott yet and she doesn’t know how to without revealing everything. She’s been avoiding her mom’s calls too, so her mom has taken to leaving incredibly long voicemails in her inbox. She knows she really should call her back.

Louise is thinking about meeting Scott for the first time when she approaches the Moir mausoleum and she’s in her own world when she enters to find Tessa. She’s kneeling down in front of the simple gravestone for Joseph, Theresa, and their baby, and it’s obvious that she’s been crying.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll go…”

Tessa gets up, clearing dust off her long skirt. She’s dressed more severely than Louise has seen her, with a high-necked blouse and her hair tightly pulled back in a bun. “No, don’t worry, it’s fine.”

“I was just here to see if everything is okay.” She gestures to her gardening basket. “I tend to the graves sometimes.”

“That’s so kind of you.” Tessa’s smile is watery. “It looks so much nicer now than it did the last time I was here.” She looks down at the peonies standing against the headstone.

“You must have known them.” Louise has always wondered what they were like.

Tessa frowns at her in confusion. “Known them? That’s for me and Scott and- and our baby.” She starts to ramble, “He’s the only one there of course, we buried him here before… everything. I don’t know whether my mother actually placed coffins here, or just the headstone, or…”

“Wh-what?” Louise feels dizzy. “Scott never said anything about a baby.”

Tessa’s face can be inscrutable at times, but now Louise can see a whole range of emotions flash by one by one. Anger, guilt, sadness. The last one Louise knows well. “It can be difficult to talk about.”

“My mom says it’s always there, in the background, like that thought you can’t shake.” She sometimes wonders what her mom was like, before.

“She lost a child?”

“My older sister, Emily. She was six. Neuroblastoma.”

“I’m so sorry, Louise.” Tessa places her hand gently on her arm.

“It’s okay, I was two, I don’t really remember her much.” She’s not even sure if the memories she has - of them building sandcastles, or playing house, or her sister in a fuzzy pink hat pulling her along on a little wagon - are even real, or just something she’s created from the photos.

Tessa rubs her hand over and back along Louise’s arm. “That is hard in its own way.”

She doesn’t know how her dad feels about all of it. They don’t talk much, just calls here and there where he asks about school. Divorce was apparently a common side effect to the loss of a child. “My parents split up afterwards.”

For a second she thinks Tessa’s eyes shift back to the headstone. “It’s a hard event for a marriage to survive.” And a big piece of information to leave out in an explanation for how one ended.

She hugs Tessa before she really realises what she’s doing. Tessa is taken aback too because she freezes before returning the embrace. Louise had expected Tessa to wear some glamorous, sophisticated scent, but it’s surprisingly old-fashioned and very floral. It’s comforting somehow. She’s not sure which of them steps away first.

“I should let you continue,” Tessa says. “Patrick told me you were coming to the house later? I should be able to see you before I go.” She leaves only to turn around again, “Louise, would you mind if I told you about Eleanor’s medications when you’re over? I’ve already asked the others, but you might be around when they’re not and…” she rolls her eyes, “apparently I worry too much.”

“That’s no problem. I’d be happy to help.”

After Tessa leaves Louise sinks down to the ground and fingers the petals of the peonies. She wants to talk to Scott, but none of the things she wants to ask him – ‘Why didn’t you mention that you had a baby?’, ‘Don’t you think your son dying might be the reason your wife asked someone to make you immortal rather than the fact she was cheating on you?’ … ‘Was your wife even cheating on you?’ – feel like great conversation starters, especially not over the phone.

She goes home, gets changed, and calls her mom.

 

It’s Kaitlyn who answers the door to the Moir house later, immediately hugging her and telling her how beautiful the flowers were.

“Happy anniversary! Did you do anything special?”

“Oh, just dinner in London. We didn’t want to go anywhere too far.” Kaitlyn inclines her head towards the living room where Louise can hear Eleanor talking to Patrick. “I hear you’ve been called up to learn about the medicine regime too. Tessa’s in the kitchen, Andrew should be downstairs in a bit, the two of you will be having your lesson together. There will be a test.” Louise laughs. “I’m not joking. Don’t stress about it though, she has handwritten notes and Chiddy recorded her going through it all earlier.”

Andrew appears beside Kaitlyn and presses a kiss to the side of her head. “Are you prepared for this, Louise?”

“I thought I was,” she answers as the two of them make their way to the kitchen, “now I’m not so sure.”

They hear Tessa before they enter, her voice showing that her patience is being tested. “I said that I would decide later, Scott. It’s not that I want to be away from her, you must know that.”

When they go in she’s standing with one hand on her hip and the other on the sideboard while Scott’s at the big table in the middle of the room chopping vegetables.

“Everything okay in here?” Andrew asks pleasantly.

Tessa and Scott turn and greet them, smiles a little strained. Scott asks Louise about how her day has been and makes no reaction when she tells him she’s been to the cemetery so Tessa clearly hasn’t told him about their conversation earlier.

As Scott tells her about what he’s cooking for dinner she watches Tessa take down bottle after bottle of pills from the cabinet.

“I have to go learn about all of those,” she informs him.

She goes to stand beside Andrew and Tessa mimes lifting a cloth off all the medication. “And this is what it takes to keep a ninety-nine year old woman semi-healthy.”

“Eleanor is ninety-nine?!” Louise knew she was old, but not that old.

“She has good genes,” Tessa replies. “I mean, look how youthful I appear!”

“Your joke timing still needs work,” Scott snipes.

Tessa closes her eyes and takes a breath. “I’ll just need to rewatch _The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel_.”

“Ooh, we should definitely do that.” Andrew’s eyes light up. “I’m a big Amy Sherman-Palladino fan,” he explains to Louise.

“Don’t bring up the _Bunheads_ cancellation,” Tessa warns.

“You had Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop…”

“Do you want to help keep my great-niece alive or not?”

Andrew coughs. “Please continue.”

Tessa hands them a sheet each, double-sided with beautifully written instructions. “Now, a lot of these are just for things that might pop up.” She moves some of the containers to the side, but there’s still a lot of pills for the day to day. “They all have the names printed on them, but most of the instructions are in French. Eleanor does know what each is for, it’s just that she might forgot what she’s taken already or the time she’s meant to take them at. A few months ago, she took two doses of her heart failure meds within an hour. Then I started keeping them out of reach.”

She goes on to explain what pills Eleanor should take and when she should take them. Louise wonders if Tessa has been a teacher at some stage, because she has the patter and the expectant looks down. They both answer all the questions she asks them correctly, which Louise is thankful for because she has the distinct impression Tessa would have just kept going.

“You’re basically a nurse again, Tessa. Just like when we first met.” Andrew is putting the pills away because he’s the only one who can easily reach the top shelf.

“Much fewer stitches nowadays, embroidery ones only.”

“She had an unusually high survival rate,” Andrew tells Louise.

“Being a vampire is useful occasionally.” Louise had recently learned that vampire blood did indeed promote faster healing.

“She saved my life, and then she broke my heart.”

Tessa rolls her eyes. “I hid the fact that you were recovering much too quickly from a bullet wound, and then saved us both from a ridiculous mistake by refusing your proposal.” Proposal! “It would have been dreadfully awkward when you left me for Kaitlyn.”

“This is very true. I should go rescue her, I think Eleanor wanted to try and teach her how to play Bezique again.”

“He kissed me once. It was wartime, people made grand gestures because they didn’t know if they’d live to see one another again. I suppose it was catching,” Tessa says as soon as Andrew has left, before Louise even has time to formulate a question. Not that she was entirely sure she should seeing as Scott is right there.

He doesn’t seem very taken with the discussion. “You never told me that Andrew had asked you to marry him.”

“Because I knew he had. He wrote me about it back in 1916, it went something along the lines of ‘I was talking about you to my pal, Scott, didn’t know he was the husband you were talking about!’ Former husband,” she corrects quickly. She seems flustered now. “Well, you can’t exactly throw stones about not telling people things.”

Scott comes over to where they’re standing. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s not my place to…”

“Tessa,” he glares at her.

“You didn’t tell Louise about the existence of our child!”

Scott is silent for a second. Then, “Do I know for sure he was mine?”

Louise hears the slap more than sees it. She stares at the aged tiles on the floor as the blood drops down and hears Tessa sob out, one pained word at a time, “You can say or think whatever you want about anything I did after he died, but don’t you dare question who our son was.” Footsteps, and then, “And for God’s sake feed, Scott, you’re not yourself.”

Scott makes his way over to the freezer, takes something out, and then places it in the microwave.

Louise doesn’t have anything to say to him right now. He’s stemming the blood flow from his nose with a tea towel and tapping his foot in time with the hum of the machine.

She grabs a sponge and kneels down to clean up the mess.

The countdown timer rings. He’s drinking blood straight out of a bag, and it makes her stomach churn. It’s disgusting, and yet there’s something near captivating about the way his arms are flexed grabbing onto the pouch and how his throat moves as the blood flows down… She can’t watch this like it’s some kind of show. Louise stares back down at the floor and focuses on scrubbing.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Scott says when he’s finished the first bag and is about to start on the second.

“Are you usually that shitty a person when you haven’t had something to drink?” She rinses her hands at the sink, the red diluting into nothing.

“Not that bad, no.”

She turns around. “You deserved that.”

“I deserved much worse than that.”

Louise doesn’t argue.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s difficult for me to…”

“I know that it must be hard. But I’m not asking you to share everything, I would just like to know the basic facts. That you had a wife, that you had a son…” She folds her arms over her chest, “My parents divorced after my sister died.”

“Louise, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. You never said anything.”

“I was very young, it’s… You never said anything about being a vampire, or being married, or having a child.”

He joins her by the sink and starts to drain the excess blood off the tea towel. “I don’t want to offend you by saying this, but I hadn’t exactly planned for us to get this close.”

“Well, I wasn’t either! I wasn’t expecting,” she looks around at the blood bags on the table and the stained tea towel in the sink, “this.” It all seems so ridiculous all of a sudden.

Scott puts the remnants of his snack in the bin before wiping down the surface. He sits down at the table, resting his head in his hands. “We named him after both our fathers, and me too, I suppose.”

So now he wants to talk. “I didn’t know your first name was Joseph.” She had never put it together, Tessa being short for Theresa seemed very obvious now.

“Nobody ever called me that, it was always Scott. My mother’s family had come from Scotland, and she read a lot of Walter Scott when she was expecting me, and it ended up sticking. We hadn’t really settled on what to call the baby, I thought Joseph seemed a very adult name. We tried different variations, but he cried at all of them. He cried a lot. Tessa singing was the only thing that quietened him,” he laughs, “she was a terrible singer. I was so surprised at that, because she was so musical – the most beautiful dancer. And she played the piano so well, and her speaking voice was so pretty.” Louise wonders if she’s now receiving more details than she would like. Scott’s voice starts to choke up, “After, I thought I should have been grateful that he didn’t sleep that much, because it meant we had more time with him. He was only three months old when he died. It was a flu, and he was so small.”

Louise inches closer to the table. “I’m so sorry, Scott. I…”

There’s a knock on the kitchen door and she turns to see Tessa waiting there. She’s changed into more comfortable clothes for travelling, and it’s strange seeing her in sportswear, with no make-up. She looks very, very young. Scott stands up.

Tessa moves into the room. “I’m going now, and I wanted to see that you were alright before I left.”

“It was cruel, and untrue, and I cannot apologise enough.” Louise thinks this is one of the few moments she’s seen him look directly into Tessa’s eyes.

“I knew you didn’t really mean it.”

“I still said it though.”

“Yes, but I probably shouldn’t have hit you quite so hard.” Tessa tries for a smile, and then moves in closer, examining Scott’s face. “Has it still not set yet?” His nose is rather wonky, had Tessa broken it?

“I don’t heal quite as fast as the rest of you, I think it’s the diet,” he shrugs.

“You’re still… doing okay with that, right?” Her voice is so soft and gentle that it hurts somehow.

“I am, thank you.” Louise can’t see it happening, but they seem to be drawing closer together.

Tessa takes a step back. “Good. I’ve decided that we will come back here afterwards, and plan what to do next together. It was very generous of you to offer them a place to stay.”

“It’s no problem,” Scott assures her.

She turns to Louise, “And thank you so much for agreeing to help out with Eleanor’s medication. I know it’s a lot to remember.”

“Eye drops in the morning, along with the kidney and heart pills. Give them to her with a glass of orange juice because she doesn’t like the taste and make sure she eats something…” Scott rattles off the prescriptions one by one while Tessa stares at him, mouth slightly parted.

“Thank you,” she breathes out at the end, eyes bright. She sniffs, “I should go say goodbye to everyone else. I’ll see you both soon.”

There’s silence for about a minute after she goes, and then Scott says, “That went better than expected, eh?”

“It did,” Louise agrees. She’s not sure why she’s finding it hard to muster up a smile. Peace between Scott and Tessa would be a good thing for everyone surely.

 

*****

_June 1888_

The letter from Margaret Duhamel is rather dreary until the news at the end. In a postscript, with a profligate amount of exclamation marks, she notes that she will be commencing a B.A. at Queen’s in September. It seems a grave miscarriage of justice to Tessa that Meg, who had only managed to obtain her teaching license because Tessa had tutored her in English, should get to go on to further study while she languishes at home. Although perhaps the idea that she would have a sensible friend with her to act as chaperone could help persuade her parents to permit her to attend. Their financial help is not needed as the scholarship she received for the highest marks in English in Ontario will take care of all that.

She smiles when she hears her mother knocking at her door. She can try out her plan with her initially, and then her father. “Come in, Mamma!”

“Could you open the door please, Tessa? I have a surprise for you.”

She opens it to find her mother carrying a large, familiar white box. “Is that a dress?!” Her mother smiles as she places the box on the bed. “But I had dresses made for the new season, and Father said I wasn’t to have any more until Christmas.”

“I had this made for your birthday, but I wanted to wait to give it to you.” She opens the lid and removes Mr Caron’s business card and the tissue paper covering the gown. It is emerald green, with a Bertha neckline trimmed with black lace, tight, short, small-puffed sleeves, and a large, full skirt.

“Oh, Mamma, it is beautiful!” The skirt is perhaps a tad old-fashioned, but it will suit Tessa’s figure. “Is tonight a special event?” The Semples often held balls, she had not thought another new gown would be required.

Her mother sits down on the bed and pats the available space to her right. When Tessa joins her she takes her hands in hers. “The Moirs are coming to the ball tonight. Their youngest son is unmarried you know.”

“The railway people?” Why would their son being unmarried be of any… “Mamma, I turned nineteen last month, I do not think we need to marry me off quite yet. Isn’t Jane’s wedding enough for you to be thinking about?”

“That is rather the reason why I think it would be so beneficial if you and the young Mr Moir were to find one another pleasing. We all love John, but as a young lawyer he has still to make his money. It would be… prudent if you were to make a more immediately financially advantageous match.”

Her voice begins to shake, “You want me to marry him for money?” Tessa has thought of marriage as a matter for later, and certainly not a decision to be made purely on the contents of a bank account. It seemed so grubby.

“Of course not, my dear. We want to see if the two of you like each other, and if you do, well, it would be positive for both our families. Father can help the Moirs with their bids for government contracts and we can help them further integrate to London society.”

Tessa rises from the bed. “Do you know what kind of man he is? What are his hobbies, his education? Did he go to college? Or does he work on the railroads?” The last comment was uncharitable.

“Theresa,” her mother says sternly. Tessa cannot remember the last invocation of her Christian name. “A fine education is not a mark of a man’s character, and there is no shame in good, honest work. Do you remember that your grandmother, whom you adored, grew up above the grocer shop where her father worked?” This is not a fact usually readily admitted in the Virtue household. “I believe that Scott is heavily involved in his father’s business interests and is reported to have a good mind.” What sort of name is Scott? “I regret to say I do not know more about him, but you may try and garner some information for yourself tonight when you will treat him with courtesy and respect.”

“Yes. I spoke rashly.” Even if she has no intention of marrying him she will of course be kind.

Her mother nods. “Did Meg have anything of interest to divulge in her letter?”

Now is her chance. “She is going to attend Queen’s. I was thinking that…”

“Tessa,” her mother stands up and puts her hands on Tessa’s cheeks, “no more talk of university. Girls like you do not need a B.A.”

“Girls like me?”

“Girls with your social standing, and charm, and beauty. Why the need for further study? What would you do afterwards? Teach? That is for women who need to work.”

“I want to learn.” Why is this so difficult to comprehend?

“You will have plenty to learn about running a household. And how would it affect your marital prospects? That is what you need to focus on.”

She had been foolish to think she would find an ally in her mother. “I need to get dressed.”

“Good girl.” Her mother presses a dry kiss to her forehead, and goes.

When she is ready to leave Tessa must acknowledge that her mother’s taste for her in dresses at least is impeccable. The ritual of putting up her hair and choosing her jewellery (jet droplet earrings to complement the trim on her gown) calms her, and the final effect is altogether quite becoming. Often Tessa feels like a quiet mousy thing in the corner at these gatherings, a girl who had spent too much time with books, or playing sports with her brothers, but tonight she feels sparkling, like the bubbles in champagne.

Almost as soon as they enter the ballroom at the Semple house her mother urges her over to a kindly-faced woman in red. “Mrs Moir, may I present my daughter, Tessa.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Moir.” Her mother is wasting no time.

“Oh, the pleasure is mine, dear.” Mrs Moir’s hands are warm even through both their sets of gloves, and it feels comforting. She looks over Tessa’s shoulder and beckons someone over. “You should meet my youngest son, Scott.”

When Tessa turns to greet him, she finds that Scott Moir is not the man she expected him to be. She had had visions of short men with pointy ears, or tall ones with protruding stomachs. But Scott is an ideal height, has fine posture, and a face that she cannot bring herself to look away from. His gaze is intense, and yet his eyes are sweet. Their mothers make the introductions but they are hard to hear over the hammering of Tessa’s heart and the rushing in her ears. She hates that her treacherous body is following right along with this scheme her mother has concocted.

Before she quite knows what is happening she finds herself in the middle of the dancefloor with Scott’s hand on her waist, firm but gentle, and the other in her gloved hand. She cannot recall if his name was on her dance card, or if she had even seen it in her mother’s evening bag. She cannot think of much else other than her inability to say anything at all to the man in front of her. She feels almost like the little mermaid in the tales of Mr Andersen – presented with a prince and robbed of her voice. Except Scott Moir isn’t a prince, his family build railroads, and she is meant to be going to university, not having her head turned by men with comely hair and kind eyes…

And then the music starts.

Tessa has always loved to dance, but this is something entirely new. This is floating on a cloud, or flying through the stars. To waltz with Scott is to have the old familiar dance renewed, made fresh and fast and free. His frame is a delight, his rhythm perfect, his understanding of music innate. He leads her around the floor like it is a task he was born to do, as if this is the moment he has been waiting for.

When the music ends she feels unmoored, as if now out of step with the world. “You are a wonderful dancer,” she tells him, breathing harder than perhaps warranted after the exertion of a simple waltz. Her ribcage is straining so strenuously against her corset that she fears a lace may break.

Scott beams, “It is easy to dance well with such a talented partner.”

She shakes her head; her cheeks feel so red. Her complexion must be reaching the blotchy stage her mother complains about. “Who taught you to dance like that?”

“You didn’t expect such fine work from a graduate of Ilderton School?” he grins.

All her earlier diatribe comes flashing back at her. “No, I…”

“My mother taught me. She taught all my brothers, but I’m the only one who never got very good at refusing her. Occasionally she still…” He reddens, as if he has revealed too much.

“I think that is very sweet,” she says firmly.

A polka begins and Tessa realises that they have not left dance hold. “Should you be with the next gentleman on your dance card?” he frowns. “That is how they arrange affairs at balls, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but… I haven’t seen my dance card yet.” Tessa feels light-headed in her flouting of the etiquette that has been drilled into her for years.

“It would be most uncouth of me to leave you unattended on the dance floor,” Scott says solemnly as they take off once more.

“You could be rescuing me from Richard Semple,” she whispers. “He steps on my toes at each ball without fail.” He had ruined her lovely new cream slippers. “And his hands tend to wander.” Maybe she has been taken mad.

Scott scowls, and yet it does nothing to detract from his charm. “My mother would cut my hands off if they weren’t where they were supposed to be.”

Tessa concludes that she has definitely been overtaken by some sort of delusion or fever when she finds herself thinking that having Scott’s strong, capable hands traversing over her would be a far from unpleasant experience.

He still appears perplexed. “So even if you don’t want to dance with a man, if his name is on your card you must? That’s barbaric!”

“It is rather unfair.” She laughs, louder than usual, and he echoes her, eyes veritably twinkling.

The dance comes to an end all too soon, and her mother appears by their side. Clearly one extra dance was just on the edge of permissible, but any more would be to push the bounds of common decency.

“I am deeply sorry, Mrs Virtue,” Scott offers before her mother has time to speak. “I was quite unaware that I might be preventing another young man from enjoying the delight of your daughter’s company. You see, back at home in Ilderton we are yet to embrace the sophisticated practice of dance cards.”

Tessa bites her lip and determinedly avoids looking at him.

“Oh, please do not worry, Mr Moir. I quite understand. And, as it happens, Tessa has yet to fill her dance card for tonight, so if you would be as generous as to share the final dance with her I would be most grateful.”

He bows. “It would be an honour.”

Her mother tugs her along, leaning close and whispering in her ear, “Now, that wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“No.” Tessa is not yet ready to give her the satisfaction of knowing that it was very much the direct opposite of bad.

“When I said you might want to think about the possibility of marriage I wasn’t intending for you to get engaged tonight! Two dances in a row, Tessa, really!”

She glances over her bare shoulder to see Scott surrounded by the fine society ladies of London with their daughters in tow, but only looking at her. She smooths down the green taffeta and smiles.

 

(The engagement ring Scott gives her three months later, with its rose cut emerald in a cluster of diamonds, matches the gown perfectly.)

*****

 

The next few days while Tessa is away are thankfully a lot less dramatic. Scott is in better spirits, but as to whether that is because of Tessa’s absence or his quenched cravings Louise can’t guess. She spends more time at the Moir house, though she feels very surplus to requirements when it comes to helping out with Eleanor’s medication. Patrick knows all the timings, Scott remembers all the instructions, Andrew fetches the pills, and Kaitlyn gives them to Eleanor and deals with her complaints about how she can take care of herself.

Scott is a bit more open with her now, sharing stories about life in Ilderton when he was young, or of travelling all around Canada in the 1890s. It’s this, combined with his offer to accompany her on her visits to her great-grandmother that make her think dating him isn’t a bad idea after all. The elderly woman seems wary of him at first, but once he starts singing along with all the songs from her youth she’s happier than Louise has seen her since the stroke.

There are still questions though. Little things that gnaw away at her when she’s alone at night (not the least among them being that they’ve done nothing more than kiss ever since the incident in the woods, and if she thinks about it hard enough even the frequency of that type of contact has lessened). His stories always end when they reach the point when Tessa must have appeared in his life. He asks Kaitlyn and Eleanor if they’ve heard from her every day, and at first it comes across as politeness, but by the third day his tone seems almost urgent. And there’s the way he stills whenever anyone mentions her name, and listens so intently to all of Eleanor’s stories about her, even the ones Louise has a hard time keeping an interest in.

One evening, after they’ve watched Eleanor beat everyone at her favourite card game, Scott offers to play with her. When she asks if he’s sure he knows the rules, he replies, “I was married to Tessa,” which apparently is answer enough.

“Did you win often?” Eleanor asks as she deals the cards.

“Not as often as I would have liked.”

“That isn’t much of an answer,” Eleanor narrows her eyes. “Tessa is very competitive.”

“One time she threw a card at my head.” His voice sounds fond when talking about her for once.

“Really?! She’s usually a good loser.”

“Oh, this was while we were playing. I, uh, I believe her problem was that I wasn’t showing the game sufficient respect.” His gaze is now firmly on the cards.

“She and Grandmother always did take cards very seriously.”

“Is that how you learned how to play?” Louise asks.

“Yes,” Eleanor frowns, “have I told you this before?”

“No,” Louise rushes, “Tessa had just mentioned that she lived with you when you were growing up.”

“Oh yes, from when my grandmother came to live with me in Toronto until I was about fifteen and she went to England to study. We wrote letters then until the war. Grandmother told me Tessa had died in a bombing, I think because she didn’t know if we were ever going to hear from her after she went to France, and even then if I went looking for her after, well… that was the secret revealed.”

“How did you find out?”

“One weekend I came home from college to surprise Grandmother, and there was Tessa, looking exactly the same.” She pauses to say something to Scott about the game that means nothing to Louise. “It’s funny, but I still thought she seemed so much older than me. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I saw her after a few years and suddenly she was a girl. I was lecturing by then and she looked like she could have been a student in Introduction to Economics.” She looks up at Scott, “Matters look different from a new perspective, after time to reflect, you know.”

The comment draws no reaction from him, but it causes Kaitlyn to put down her magazine and study them.

Scott makes a move (or a meld, or a combination, Louise really doesn’t know what’s going on), and Eleanor’s face becomes suspicious. “You’re good at this.”

Scott shrugs, “Luck, I imagine, it’s been so long since I played.”

Eleanor makes a sound that marks Louise’s first real-life encounter with a harrumph.

By the end of the game it seems that Scott is indeed good at this as he wins by a clear margin. “When you said you lost more than you liked to, what did you mean by that exactly?” Eleanor demands.

“Tessa did win most of the time, but it stood me in good stead with anyone I played after. She taught me all she knew.” Louise is starting to think that Scott and Tessa had spent a lot more time together than people who allegedly had nothing in common generally do. “Would you like a rematch?”

“Yes, please. You’re much better at this than everyone else,” Eleanor whispers.

“I heard that,” chorus Kaitlyn, Andrew, and Patrick from different corners of the room.

“The truth hurts,” Eleanor states, as Scott starts to shuffle the cards.

He’s dealing them when a knock is heard at the front door. Eleanor struggles to get up from her chair and Kaitlyn says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

Patrick and Andrew join her and Louise begins to worry it won’t be Tessa at the door, but then she hears Kaitlyn’s laugh and relaxes. Tessa is introducing whoever she has with her, and then she rushes in straight towards Eleanor, not even seeming to register Louise, or Scott rising from his seat. There’s something lighter about her now, a vibrancy that wasn’t there before.

“You can release me now, Tessa,” Eleanor says, patting her on the back, “Scott will be peeking into my cards if I can’t keep an eye on them.”

Tessa does as she’s told, but remains seated on the armrest of Eleanor’s chair, smiling over quickly at Louise and then looking up shyly at Scott.

He smiles back at her.

“Scott was telling me about the time you threw a card at his head,” Eleanor says, claiming back both Louise and Tessa’s attention.

“He was what?” Tessa jerks her head from Eleanor to Scott.

“We were, uh, you know, talking about how competitive you are,” he’s scratching the back of his neck and sounding a lot less smooth than he did earlier.

“Indeed,” Tessa blinks.

“You didn’t call.” On first listen Louise assumes Scott is being judgemental, but then when she looks at him it seems more like concern. She wonders if Tessa is confused too.

“I got a little paranoid about being tracked,” she explains, her tone more like it had been that evening in the kitchen just before she left than the careful way she’d spoken to Scott previously. “And phone signals are weird when you’re around witches doing a lot of magic. I am convinced it interferes.”

“You might be right. Are you happy with who you found?”

“Yes, they make a good team. Kaitlyn already knew them a little, she’s upstairs now showing them their rooms. Adam did some training with Yuna, and they both worked with a man who used to work with Mao so I’ve heard good things.”

Kaitlyn comes back in, with a dark-haired man and a blonde woman closely following her. It takes Louise a couple of seconds to realise these are the witches. They don’t fit with any of her ideas of what a witch should look like, both well-groomed and dressed in jeans.

“This is Scott, and Eleanor is beside Tessa of course, and this is Louise, Scott’s girlfriend,” Kaitlyn explains. “Everyone, this is Adam and Ashley.”

Ashley smiles at Louise before making her way over to meet Eleanor while Adam makes a beeline to Scott.

“Who did this to your hair?” he asks. “Had you done something to anger them?” Louise will admit that Scott’s hair is a bit shaggy looking, but she likes it. “It was so much better before this,” Adam continues.

“H-how do you know that? Have we met before?” Scott frowns, leaning his head slightly to the side.

“I’m a witch,” Adam replies. “And whoever grew your hair for you does not deserve that title.” He shakes his head and then comes over to Louise, taking her hand in his. “It’s… oh, I didn’t know you were one of us!” He pulls her up into a hug. “Tessa! You never said you had someone else to help out!”

“What do you mean?” Louise is so confused.

“You’re a witch,” Adam says, like this is a fact and not some strange joke.

“No, I’m not.” She would know if she was a witch, she would have gotten like a letter or something.

Ashley joins them, putting her hand on Louise’s. “Oh sweetie, you mightn’t know it, but you very much are.”

Louise steps back. Tessa had seemed like she had this under control, why is she bringing in these lunatics to help protect Eleanor? “That’s insane.”

“Tell us a bit about your family. What do your parents do?” Ashley asks, voice kind.

“Uh, my mom is a bank manager, my dad…”

“Oh my God, such a typical runaway rebel job.” Adam rolls his eyes. “What about her parents?”

“My grandma is a florist, I don’t know about…”

Ashley smiles. “Does she make remedies – tinctures, salves, stuff like that?”

“Yeah, but they’re just herbal remedies. Lots of people make those.”

“But do they almost always work?” Adam presses.

“I don’t know, I’ve never used them. My mom has no time for that kind of thing.” That’s downplaying her mom’s opinions on natural medicine.

Why are these questions making her more uneasy? She thinks of all the people who come to the store raving about the various concoctions her grandma produces, and of the little workroom with its dusty old books in Greek and Latin, and about how the flowers in the shops back in Vancouver are never as bright as the ones her grandma sells. And then she thinks of her insistent voice on the crackly line, so determined that the bluebead lilies be picked at twilight because that was when they were at their most powerful.

“She’s on a natural healing retreat right now, and she has lots of books my mom never let me look at in her storeroom, and- and she has a black cat!” Pansy seems like an awfully knowing cat.

Ashley, who had been nodding with each comment, now shakes her head. “Oh, that’s just superstition.”

“But the rest of it?” The hot tears in her eyes are ready to fall.

“We don’t need to be convinced,” Adam says. “We know.”

Ashley puts an arm around her shoulder, “Why don’t we head out to a quiet room, just the three of us, and try something?”

Louise had forgotten everyone else was still around, she peeps over the witches’ shoulders to find them all looking at her in various stages of confusion and concern.

Scott clears his throat. “Do you want me to come with you?”

She doesn’t think she wants an audience for whatever is coming next. “No, thanks, I need… I think this is something I should do alone.”

Adam leads the way, murmuring something about having seen candles on Kaitlyn’s tour earlier, and then opens the door to the never-used dining room. He flicks the light switch on and guides Louise and Ashley inside.

Ashley settles Louise down on one of the chairs and Adam hands her one of the candles from the candelabra on the table.

“Do you want me to light it?” she asks.

Adam nods before going to switch off the light.

She shivers and Ashley rubs her shoulder, saying “Just breathe, Louise. Close your eyes and breathe. Think about your heartbeat and…”

“Oh please,” Adam whispers. “She’s a witch who has never used her powers and is already upset, this isn’t the time for magic through centring. Louise, take that confusion you’re feeling and delve into it. Mine through that emotion and let the energy flow through you.”

Why is she getting competing instructions? Delving into the confusion is easy – there are so many things to question about, to worry over. She’s apparently a witch? And so is her grandma? And she and her mom have been hiding this from her? And then there are all the old worries about the little issue of dating a vampire, and his ex-wife showing up, and those long glances they give one another like no one else in the world exists.

All the worries are murky and cold, and then there’s this little hint of warmth that starts small and spreads through her bloodstream and grows and grows out of her skin and into the world. She opens her eyes and the room is illuminated, not just the candle in her hand but the others on the stand and the ones behind glass in the tall dressers. They’re shining so bright, too bright, and then the light is gone.

“You did it!” Ashley and Adam hug her, one on either side. “That was amazing.”

“I want to do it again.” She wants to control it, to take that power and own it, make it truly hers.

They let go and she closes her eyes. It’s like she’s more aware now, can tap into the beat of her heart and the rhythm of her lungs. She breathes in and out and in and out and there it is again – the spark, the light. This time when she opens her eyes only the candle in her hand is lit, but the flame is strong and steady.

She smiles.

“Are you willing to admit you’re a witch now?” Adam asks. “And that we’re not crazy?”

Oh God. “Can you read minds?”

Ashley laughs. “No, don’t worry, we just read your face.”

“So, this is real. I’m a witch.” The last sentence comes out like a whisper, so she repeats it, louder. “I’m a witch. And no one ever told me.”

“This life isn’t for everyone,” Adam says. “It can be difficult and dangerous. If your mom wanted out… I don’t think many people would hold it against her.”

“And we wouldn’t hold it against you if you decided that it wasn’t for you,” Ashley adds. “You have your own life already, and magic… well, it changes things. Who you are to people, what they expect of you. But we’re going to be around for the next while, and if you want to learn more I think we’d both be happy to help.”

“For sure,” Adam agrees. “We can be Magic Eye for the Untrained Witch.” He shakes his head and point his finger. “No. Witchy Eye for the… Ashley, can you help me out here?”

“We’ll workshop the title and get back to you.” Ashley pats her on the shoulder before getting up off the table and walking out into the hall.

Louise blows out the candle and follows.

Scott is standing across from the door, frowning down at the floor with his arms crossed over his chest. The others go into the living room and she walks over to him.  
“I lit all the candles with my mind! Or powers… I don’t really know how this all works,” she babbles. Excitement is streaming through her.

“Wow. That’s… yeah, I don’t really know what to say.”

“I guess it’s my turn to surprise you with being supernatural.”

“Must be.” He laughs a little woodenly. “Do you want to go back in?”

“I was thinking I’d head home.” She wants to look at all those old books.

“Of course, yeah, you must be tired. It’s a lot to take in. You should ask Tessa about people to talk to, she knows a whole host of witches. Other than Adam and Ashley I mean, if you want to learn more.”

“That’s a good idea, thanks.” She puts her arms around him.

They break apart when someone opens the living room door, and look around to see Tessa turning back only to spin around again, wincing slightly. “Sorry, I do really need to go to the kitchen. I need to get Eleanor her medication.” Her eyes go comically wide, “Patrick had to remind me. I’ve definitely been gone too long.”

“I was just leaving,” Louise says, walking along to the kitchen with her. “You might need help getting at them, Andrew put them up on the very highest shelf.”

“I can stand on one of the chairs,” Tessa smiles.

“They’re pretty rickety.” Scott is following behind them.

Tessa goes into the pantry once they’re in the kitchen and comes out with a footstool. “This might be safer.” She places it in front of the cupboard and reaches up on the top of her toes, wavering slightly. Scott reaches out to steady her by the waist. “Yeah, this might have been too ambitious, maybe you could…” He holds on tighter and lifts her up. Tessa grabs the necessary bottles and he places her back on solid ground. It’s all surprisingly graceful, until she overbalances and falls against his chest. She moves off quickly, putting the bottles down and tightening her ponytail. They start mumbling while both staring at the floor.

“I’ll go get the orange juice.” Scott takes off to the fridge while Tessa seems to be trying to regulate her breathing as she opens the caps of the little containers one by one. It’s weirdly fascinating to watch them.

“How are you doing, Louise? With the… news? I’m so sorry I didn’t ask earlier.” Tessa is back to serene composure.

“Oh, not bad I guess? Just trying to figure things out.”

“I could give you some contact details for some other witches I know, if you want. I’m sure they’d only be too happy to help.”

“Scott said that you were the person to talk to.” He appears with the orange juice in hand as if she’d summoned him.

“Oh, that was kind of him.” Tessa turns to face them, the collection of tablets in her palm. “And thank you for getting the juice.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, just passes it over to her.

“How was your trip?” Louise asks.

“I’m glad to be back, but it was very helpful.” She pauses, “I feel more hopeful now.”

“That’s good,” Scott says. “Very good.”

“It is,” Tessa agrees. “Good.”

Louise thinks this might actually be worse than the sniping. Not the lack of animal blood induced accusations of infidelity fighting of course, but maybe more awkward than the bickering.

Tessa raises her full hands. “I should get this to Eleanor. Oh, we were talking about meeting tomorrow morning to start putting a plan together for, ah, Didier. You should come, Louise. And I’ll have that list ready for you.”

“Thank you, Tessa. Do you need a hand with doors or anything?”

“Oh no, I’ll be fine.”

After she leaves Scott goes over to try and put the medications back up. “How about I lift you up?” he asks.

“I think you should just wait for Andrew to do it.” Louise doesn’t really feel like emulating Tessa. “I’ll head home now.” She kisses him on the cheek and makes her way out to the car.

As she’s driving home she wonders if apparition is a real thing and if she could just stop driving and do that all the time instead. It would be one way of cutting down on her carbon footprint. She doesn’t think about Scott and Tessa and whatever issues they have because she’s just found out she’s a witch and that’s enough mental energy for any night.

Pansy is waiting for her when she gets in. “Have you been waiting for me to figure all of this out?” she asks as she lifts her up.

The look in Pansy’s eyes suggests that she knows that Louise did none of the figuring out and had to be told, repeatedly, that she was a witch.

When she gets into the workshop she sets the cat down on the table and goes over to the bookshelf. Up above all the manuals on flowers and herbs sit black leather-bound yellowing tomes. There’s a space towards the right-hand side where one appears to have been removed. She supposes her grandma took it on the so-called natural healing retreat.

Louise takes the first one down and opens it up. On the first page is an intricate family tree and she begins to notice a pattern in the female names – all from Greek mythology: Hera, Penelope, Cassandra, Phoebe. And down her own line from her great-grandmother Daphne, to her grandmother Helena, her mother Athena – and then Emily and Louise. She traces her little finger over her sister’s name.

She flicks through the pages expecting to understand nothing, but there dotted across all the pages are instructions in different handwriting – tiny, cramped ones intermingling with clear and direct. The most frequent additions are from her grandma, just like in the handbook of arrangements she made up for her. Louise goes back to the start and begins to read.


	3. Watching You Without Me

When Louise wakes up the next morning she finds herself wondering, yet again, if maybe it was all a dream. But, yet again, that’s just not the case. She doesn’t even need to think about it too hard; she can feel a change in her body, in her self. It’s almost like her senses are heightened, like the world around her looks that bit clearer, that she can hear a little more keenly. Her life has been transformed, but somehow she feels more settled than she has in a long time – maybe more connected to who she’s meant to be, and to the women who have come before her.

It's a gorgeous day, sunny and warm with a beautiful blue sky, and she decides to walk to the Moir house rather than drive. She’s regretting this somewhat by the time she arrives as her sundress is sticking to her back. It’s Andrew who opens the door for her, looking rather stressed and murmuring about preparing what sounds suspiciously like a ‘murder room’.

She then sees Scott coming down the stairs carrying an ancient blackboard which he deposits in the dining room where Kaitlyn seems to be directing operations.

“Okay, just put it down the back at the head of the table, thank you Scott. Oh, hi Louise! Tessa has that list ready for you, she’s out in the back garden with Eleanor. If you could go bring her in that would be great.” Louise feels this isn’t as much an option as it is an order, no matter how friendly the tone in which it’s given.

She hears more orders when she goes outside, except these ones are being imparted to Tessa. Eleanor appears to be quite particular about how the large parasol be arranged behind her chair.

“You should really use the sunscreen too,” Tessa tells her.

“I don’t see you putting any on.”

“My skin can’t get sun damage because I’m dead! It’s going to be painful if you get burned,” Tessa cajoles.

Eleanor sighs and starts to apply the cream. Tessa raises her eyes heavenward and notices Louise on the ascent. “Oh hi! I’m just getting Eleanor settled out here, I left that list inside, I’ll go get it now!”

“Hi Eleanor. You’re not going inside for this meeting?”

“Hello Louise. Oh no, definitely not.” She pauses her efforts to the rub the lotion into her arm. “I know it’s about me, but I prefer not having to know the exact details of that part of Tessa’s life.” Louise thinks she can understand that. “She got me some new sudoku books while she was away, so I will be quite content here.” This feels like a dismissal.

Tessa comes back out carrying a glass of water in one hand and some sheets of paper in the other. She places the glass on the table beside Eleanor. “If you need…”

“If I need anything I can get it myself, and if I can’t I will ask you.” Eleanor doesn’t look up from her sudoku book, which she’s writing in using a fountain pen (Louise can’t do them in anything other than pencil). “You go off to your meeting, I’ll be fine.”

Tessa adjusts the parasol one last time before motioning to Louise to join her in returning back inside. She hands her the papers. They’re so detailed – names, areas of interest, location, contact details.

“I might have more information for you later, there are some people I want to check with before I give you their email address. I hope that’s okay?”

“This is amazing. Thank you so much, it must have taken you ages.” Louise thinks it will take her quite some time to sift through all this information, she couldn’t guess how long it took for Tessa to compile it all.

“Oh, it’s nothing. We need less sleep than humans anyway, may as well be productive in those extra hours!”

They enter the dining room and see Scott and Kaitlyn both standing at the blackboard, now leaning against the dresser, with chalk in hand squabbling over the spelling of Gailhaguet. Everyone else is seated around the large table, vampires on one side and witches on the other. Adam waves her over to take a seat beside him.

“I don’t think we need a board with his name on it. It’s like we’re recreating one of those crime shows Eleanor like so much.” Nonetheless, Tessa takes the chalk from Kaitlyn and corrects the mess of vowels.

Kaitlyn sits at one of the chairs at the top of the table and Scott pulls out the other for Tessa before taking a place beside Patrick.

“This is all very formal,” Tessa states, motioning to the paper and pens in front of each person present. “I don’t think we’ve ever put this much effort into preparation before.” She folds her hands on the table. “This is different though. We’re the ones on the backfoot, we don’t know if they’ll find her, or if they already have and are just waiting. I don’t want to sit here and wait for them to come to us.”

“Okay. So what do you want to do?” Scott prompts.

“I’ll need to make sure Eleanor is somewhere safe, with people who will take care of her, but I’ve been thinking that we should go and surprise them.” Louise thinks this sounds exactly like the plan Tessa has had from the beginning, although now she seems to be open to the idea of more help. “Of course, that will be tricky seeing as he has at least seven properties in France alone.”

“Doesn’t Morgan Cipres know him well? Didn’t you and he used to… were…” Patrick looks back and forth between Tessa and Scott before retreating back into his chair.

Tessa winces even before Kaitlyn says “Bet you wish you didn’t ghost him now.”

“How was I supposed to reply to… that? I couldn’t,” her voice drops to a whisper that sounds almost scandalised, “respond in kind?!”

Adam leans forward, resting his chin on the palm of his hand. “Please tell me more.”

“Morgan is a French vampire whom I had, what I would describe as, well, a dalliance with…”

Kaitlyn cuts across Tessa’s explanation. “They hooked up a few times but he liked her more than she liked him and she was moving to Provence full-time so she ended it.”

“Very amicably! So amicably, in fact, that we continued to talk afterwards, and then he would occasionally send me messages of a… personal nature?”

Scott’s jaw is remarkably tense. “He didn’t say anything offensive, did he?”

“Noo,” Tessa elongates the ‘o’ sound. She looks like she’d rather be off fighting bad vampires, or whatever else she used to do. “I really think there’s no need to spend anymore time on this. I can’t contact him, case closed!”

“Dick pics,” Kaitlyn states, “he sent her dick pics.”

Tessa swivels her head to her right. “Nobody needs to know the sordid details!”

“One of your first lessons to me as a baby vampire was that witches should always be treated with respect, and that when working with them you must engage in open and honest communication.” Kaitlyn blinks innocently.

“And we greatly appreciate that,” Adam chimes in. “And, in the spirit of open communication… do you still have the photos?”

Tessa closes her eyes. Kaitlyn grabs her phone from her pocket, “No, she deleted those real fast, but I do follow him on Instagram, and I’m pretty sure there is a bunch of shirtless content… oh, yes.”

She hands the phone to Adam. Louise peers over as unobtrusively as she can, but her attempt at stealth is ruined when she says, “Oh my.” Tessa’s ex-whatever is very handsome indeed, and the shirtless photos are truly impressive.

“You two must have looked super hot together,” Ashley comments. “Do you have an Instagram account, Tessa?”

“Are there photos of the two of you?!” Adam asks as he scrolls down the profile, revealing yet more shirtless shots. “I hope you have some bikini shots, we know that body be bangin’!”

“Thank you… I think. I do have one, but I mainly use it to follow jewellers and designers. I don’t think it’s a great idea to post pictures of myself online when I’m not aging.”

“You are completely right, Tessa,” Andrew interjects. “All these vampires are putting their faces, and other body parts apparently, all over the internet, and then they move around while still using the same name?! It’s reckless and stupid, and who is going to be asked to clear up their mess? Me! As if I don’t have better things to be doing than hacking into social media sites!”

“Hacking?” Louise repeats. Just a few days ago Andrew had been telling her all about the wonders of the printing press and how it had changed his life.

“He’s very good,” Kaitlyn assures her. “That’s why all of us have social security numbers, and our visas and passports and whatnot. He forges them too, he’s a marvel, really.”

Tessa starts giggling. “He’s a,” more giggles, “real Renaissance man.”

“Oh my God, Tessa,” Scott groans. “That was terrible.”

“You thought it was funny!” She points at him. “Your eyes are laughing!”

He laughs out loud then, they both do, and there’s this lightness to the way they’re looking at each other now that Louise hasn’t seen between them before. As if in this moment everything is easy and fun. It feels oddly private, as if she shouldn’t be watching this.

Kaitlyn coughs. “So, destroying Didier’s attempt to kill Eleanor?”

“Right. Yes.” Tessa shuffles the blank pages in front of her. “So, find where he is in France and do things the way we usually do – get to know his movements and then swoop in. There is the unusual element of the permanent witch security team, but Ashley and Adam think they can handle Gabriella and Guillaume.”

“They’re all style and no substance,” Adam claims. “We’re still all style, but we have hidden depths and a lot of resilience.”

“They impress people because their magic looks good, but they don’t do well in a scrap. And I love it when things get scrappy.” Ashley looks quite smug about this.

“Good,” Scott says. “The thing is though… He seems to know you quite well, Tessa.”

She frowns. “Because we knew each other during the war? I doubt he remembers me, that was before he was a vampire.”

“I don’t think you’re very forgettable.” This isn’t a point Louise would argue, but she’s not overjoyed by the way Scott says it, more soft than matter-of-fact. “He seems to understand you. He threatened to harm Eleanor, not you. He must know which would hurt you more.”

“And if he figured that out, maybe he’s also figured out what kind of strategy I’m likely to favour,” Tessa concludes. She sighs, “If it weren’t for the death sentence hanging over Eleanor’s head this would be quite a fun challenge. Killing vampires is rarely all that intellectually stimulating in my experience. It’s so easy to do away with men who can’t perceive you as a threat.”

“All you have to do is smile and simper and they let you into their house, then you invite over your friends and it’s as good as over,” Kaitlyn says in wonder.

“Did the two of you really kill one hundred vampires that way during the 90s?” Ashley asks.

“One hundred? It was definitely not _that_ many,” Tessa scoffs.

“We did kill a bunch of old Italians at once though.”

“Oh yes! The ones who were bragging about all the stories they told Polidori and Byron!” Tessa turns to Louise. “Then one of them tried quoting ‘She Walks in Beauty’ as a seduction technique.” She pauses, “Definitely not the worst way of going about it, but I do take issue with the murder of innocent people.”

“And he used way too much cologne,” Kaitlyn adds, making it seem like this might be worse than the murder thing.

“But that’s really not all that relevant.” Tessa bites her lip. “None of those old tricks are going to work this time. Scott, what do you think we should do?”

“Um, honestly?” He scratches the back of his head. “I know you said this isn’t what you want, but I think waiting it out sounds like the best way. He probably doesn’t know about our… history, or about me at all, and if he does look in Canada it would be London or Toronto.”

“I’ve probably underutilised waiting as an option,” Tessa says, more to herself than anyone else.

“You absolutely did the right thing in leaving, but I think it could be a while before he makes a move. He is a vampire after all, and time- it’s different, you know that. He mightn’t even start searching until about six months.”

“I can’t ask you to let us stay here for that long. It would be too much of an imposition.”

Louise also thinks it would end in disaster, for one person if not everyone involved.

“No, it’s perfectly fine. Your sister was always kind to me, helping her granddaughter is the least I can do.”

Tessa’s answering smile wanes quickly, like she can’t quite keep it up. She turns towards Adam and Ashley, “I certainly can’t ask that you two stay that long.”

Adam waves his hands up from his lap to rest them on the table. “Listen, I may have talked a lot about how Gabi and Guillaume acting as servants to a vampire was a desecration of the sacred art of witchcraft, but if you wanted me to sign a contract to work with you for, like, three years, I would do it right now.”

Ashley snorts. “I’m also good to hang around for a bit. Anyway,” she leans back and smiles at Louise behind Adam, “seeing as Louise’s grandmother is away someone needs to introduce her to this way of life.”

“If we’re about done here we should go get to work on that!” Adam reaches over and squeezes Louise’s hand.

“Oh, of course, go ahead! I should start making plans for if we’re going to be staying here.” Tessa produces a pen of her own, not one of the biros supplied by Patrick, and grabs a few sheets of paper.

Louise gets up but is told to leave her phone and everything else behind by a firm Ashley. She’s expecting them to take her to a darkened room again, but they lead her out into the garden, past an engrossed Eleanor and down to the cherry and mulberry trees. Adam and Ashley sit on the ground and she follows suit.

“Witches have a deep connection with nature,” Ashley begins.

Adam screws up his face. “Not all of us. Some of us like to keep our hands clean.”

“I like flowers,” Louise assures Ashley. “And woods. Sometimes.”

The other woman presents her with bulbs from her pocket. “I think your grandma has already started you on potions with those tinctures without you knowing it, so I want to teach you about making things grow.”

Louise looks down at the bulbs in her hands and thinks of her great-grandmother. Maybe someone had been trying to tell her who she was. She closes her eyes.  
It’s easier this time, to catch the feeling and let it flow through her, but when she opens her eyes nothing has changed.

“Think about life, and growing, and connecting,” suggests Ashley.

As she closes her eyes again she hears Adam murmur something about how Ashley is attending too many yoga classes. Now she tries to imagine how the bulbs would grow if they were planted in the soil, how they’d fight their way up and emerge out of the ground brave and new. She sees it in her mind and when she opens her eyes again, she’s holding little blooms. White tulips with soft petals.

“Good,” Ashley praises. “Great. That’s an awesome start.”

She hands her more bulbs and they begin again.

Louise spends an hour working on it, and by the end she can create fully formed flowers from bulbs within seconds, half a life cycle on speed. She’d love to go share this with her great-grandmother but she has to open the flower shop for the afternoon. Her intention to make a quick exit from the Moir house is ruined however when she finds Tessa still sitting in the dining room.

Somehow Tessa manages to look every inch a lady, ankles gracefully crossed, when bent over a table writing furiously and wearing shorts and a sleeveless top. She looks up when she hears Louise enter and smiles. “How did you get on with Ashley and Adam?”

“Good! They’ve been amazing.” She likes that they haven’t overwhelmed her with information, even though a part of her wants to know everything now. Learning things bit by bit makes it all more manageable. It reminds her of skating, one skill after another and then joining them all together. She gestures towards the list of contacts Tessa had made out for her, “And I’m going to read through all of this after work.”

“Let me know if any of it is indecipherable, I know my handwriting is a little archaic,” Tessa winks. “It’s the one thing I’ve never been able to shake.”

“I’ll probably be back tomorrow evening so I can ask any questions then.” She lifts her belongings from the table. “How are you getting on with your plans?”

Tessa lifts the bundle of papers in front of her. “I know I have a lot of things to figure out! Getting Eleanor set up with a doctor here, what to do with the house and all our belongings back in France, whether it’s safe to visit her relatives in London…”

“Does she have many?” Louise had been imagining that Eleanor and Tessa were the only ones left.

“Some of her cousins still live in the area, the descendants of my sister’s other grandchildren.” Her voice slows and she glances down at the table, “They’re a bit far out, but they’re family.” Tessa looks up again, “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you, if you have any pressing questions that can’t wait you can call me.”

Louise hands Tessa her phone and she types in the number quickly. There is something Louise really wants to know more about, but she’s not sure if Tessa will want to discuss it.

“How did you get started with, uh, killing vampires?”

Tessa’s eyes widen. “Oh. Are you in a rush? It might take a little while.”

“I have time, if you’re comfortable talking about it.” She can skip lunch.

“It’s no problem, I understand why you’d want to know.” Louise sits down and Tessa begins. “It was during the ‘80s, I was living in New York. It all began very innocuously really. I was visiting a French witch I knew, Gwendal, he was growing my hair for me.”

“Growing your hair?” Louise repeats. Adam had said something similar to Scott yesterday, and she’d meant to ask him about it, but had then been quite distracted.

“Oh, sorry. I’m not sure how many of the little things you know about. Well, our hair is stuck at the length it is when we die, like the rest of our appearance, so cutting it is fine, but if you want to grow it again you need some supernatural assistance. And as vampires for the most part seem to be quite vain creatures, I think the majority of us have asked a witch to change it at some stage.” She frowns, “I’m sure they’ve much more important things to be doing, but I didn’t feel too badly about asking Gwendal seeing as he owed me a favour. Anyway, he was telling me about a vampire who’d approached him with an offer of work, and how the man had made him uncomfortable, but he’d been offered so much money that the offer was hard to refuse. And I said that he should put his safety above anything else and he more or less admitted that this vampire had unnerved him so much he’d started to worry about his wife and children.”

Tessa stops speaking and for a moment Louise wonders if that had been enough to cause her to confront him, but then she realises she’s taking time to steady herself, running a finger up and down the gold chain around her neck. “And after he described him to me, I knew that it was the vampire who had turned me. And Scott.”

“Oh, wow.” It had been blindingly obvious that whatever kind of relationship Tessa had shared with the man who had turned them was over, but Louise hadn’t expected it to have been permanently ended in this fashion.

“Yes. Indeed. I had done a very good job in avoiding him, but it seems that your past does catch up with you eventually. When Gwendal talked a little more about what he was asking of him it became rather clear that the-,” Tessa narrows her eyes, “age of the girls he was interested in, turning maybe, or just feeding on, had decreased. Presumably this had been an ongoing issue, but from what I could gather when I began to make inquiries no one had thought to do anything about it.” She pauses, “So I did.”

“Did Gwendal help you?”

“Not for the actual… event, I went in by myself. I didn’t really know anything about killing vampires at that point and I wasn’t aware that having a witch with you made it all a lot easier.” Seeing Louise’s confusion she explains further, “Because vampires heal so fast they’re very difficult to kill, so a witch can keep them in that state while you… make it more difficult for them to heal by… well, there’s no real need to be delicate – you have to dismember the body.”

Ah. “That makes sense.” It comes out in a gulp, which isn’t exactly the calm response she’d been aiming for.

“It was dreadfully messy. It’s funny, I would never have done it in the first place without hearing about what he was up to, I think I’d have just left New York, but I don’t think I could have gone through with all of it if it hadn’t been for the motivation of,” Tessa hefts out a sigh, “everything else.”

Louise doesn’t know what ‘everything else’ entails, but she can’t ask when Tessa looks so desolate about it.

“Gwendal did help afterwards with cleaning up,” Tessa starts again, fixing her already perfect ballerina bun. “It was a few months after it all happened that I started getting contacted by other witches about vampires with similar predilections, or ones who were killing people. And that was the beginning of my time as a vampire vigilante.”

“It must have been dangerous; didn’t other vampires try to retaliate?”

“I don’t think many would have seen any connection between the deaths, and if they had they probably didn’t know anything about me. Keeping a very low profile to evade him has paid off very well.” Tessa taps the table. “A lot of them were horribly wealthy, I assume most people suspected they were killed for their money, or over some dispute. I’ve managed to repatriate most of the antiques and put the money to good use.” She lowers her voice, “I did take quite a few jewels on the first occasion, but there wasn’t really an opportunity to sue for emotional damages and I thought I was owed. I’ve mainly used them to pay witches, which is justice really seeing as he treated them so poorly.”

It’s only then that Louise notices that she’s never been given a name for this vampire.

The grandfather clock in the hallway clangs on the hour and Louise startles. “I should probably head out. I need to open the shop in the afternoon.” She stands up. “Thank you, for telling me about all of that. I’m sorry if it upset you, or…”

“I’m fine, please don’t worry. They say it’s good to talk, don’t they?” Tessa lets out a short, not particularly happy, laugh. “I could have done with knowing that when I was young. We all could, back then.”

Louise could probably have benefitted from that advice, too. “I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe? Oh, could you let Scott know I…” She cringes, she shouldn’t be asking her boyfriend’s ex-wife to deliver messages on her behalf. “I’ll text him, sorry.”

Tessa smiles. “I’ll let him know.”

Louise thanks her again and rushes off. There turns out to have been no need for hurrying though as the shop is deathly quiet for most of the afternoon, giving her plenty of time to practise magically growing flowers. The blooms seem more vibrant than those of the naturally grown ones, and she pops them into the arrangements she makes for the two customers of the day who arrive in almost on top of one another twenty minutes before closing. The first is an elderly lady who wants flowers delivered to a nearby church for her husband’s memorial mass, and the second a woman in her thirties with a crying baby (Pansy scurries to the backroom on her arrival). The woman almost starts sobbing too when she explains that she’d completely forgotten her wedding anniversary and that her wife is returning that evening from a major business trip. Louise hastily arranges flowers while the older woman comforts her and gives her advice on teething.

The next morning is even quieter and all she does is practise until she realises she should probably do some inventory on the mixtures her grandmother sells to figure out whether she should be making new ones. She closes up at lunch and travels over to the nursing home to visit her great-grandma.

It’s an even hotter day and she can tell it’s bothering her great-grandmother from the moment she walks into her room. Daphne starts complaining as soon as she sees her, Louise can’t understand what she’s saying but she’s making the face she makes whenever the care worker whom she dislikes comes in, so it’s probably about her. When Louise opens the window she smiles, and calms down further after drinking some ice water. Louise holds the cup for her and helps her drink it slowly.

“Is that better?” she asks.

Daphne nods, and murmurs something in the tone she always used when making a joke. Louise laughs on instinct. She reaches for her bag and picks out a bulb. “I have something to show you.” She closes her eyes and thinks of growing, and of how when she was little she would garden with Daphne and her grandma, the two of them teaching her flower names and warning her about overwatering.

It's a red tulip, the biggest and brightest she’s produced so far, and when she looks at Daphne she sees tears rolling down her cheeks. But they’re happy tears, and she can feel her joy when she hugs her close.

She spends the rest of the afternoon and into the evening growing more and more flowers until the room is so full of them that they may as well be outside. Louise leaves when Daphne begins to tire. All the magic has had the opposite effect on her, she almost feels like she could fly, as if all her nerve endings are on fire. She wants to tell Adam and Ashley about what they helped her do, to tell Scott, and, a little surprisingly, Tessa too, about how happy it had made her great-grandmother. She hasn’t heard from any of them since the day before, and she’s beginning to strongly suspect that Tessa’s theory about magic interfering with phone signals may be true.

Andrew and Patrick are sitting on the porch of the Moir house, and when she gets out of her car she can see they both look upset. Louise hurries over. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?”

Andrew’s eyes are red-rimmed and he wipes them with a handkerchief before saying, “Eleanor passed away this morning. Tessa found her, after.”

Louise doesn’t understand. “But, but she was fine yesterday. I was speaking to her yesterday. Could it have been Didier?!”

“No, it was completely natural,” Patrick says gently. “An aneurysm the doctor said. They, uh, they just took the body to the funeral home.”

“Is Tessa inside, or…”

“She’s in there with Kaitlyn. I think Ashley is going to make her some tea or something so she can get some rest. She’s very upset, obviously.” Andrew folds his handkerchief.

“Of course. Can I go in and see her?” Louise wants to tell her that she’ll be thinking of her, but she would understand if Tessa would prefer to just be with those she’s close to.

“I’m sure Tessa would appreciate that.” Patrick opens the front door for her, closing it again once she’s inside.

She can hear soft sobs on the offbeat to the ticking of the clock, and she follows the sound to the living room.

Tessa is curled up on the large couch, right beside Kaitlyn who has her arms around her. Adam is a little to her side and Ashley is sitting in front of them on the coffee table, holding a large mug. “It’s just a special herbal tea, Tessa, it’s not a sedative. I promise. It helps with natural sleep.”

Louise walks in, only noticing Scott, who’s standing over to the side, arms crossed and face worried, as she begins to speak. “Tessa? I just heard about Eleanor, and I wanted to come say how sorry I am for your loss.” She never knows what to say at these times, nothing ever seems likes enough. “She was a special lady.”

Tessa clambers off the couch, and as she comes closer Louise can clearly see that, for once, she looks less than perfect. Her eyes are bloodshot, and her face and nose blotchy and red. There are even strands of hair coming out of her topknot. She’s dressed differently than usual, less classic and more youthful in a short, floral dress with billowing sleeves, and it’s so at odds with her expression that it makes the whole scene even more depressing. If Louise had ever entertained the idea that it would be reassuring to know that Tessa didn’t look like a goddess at all times (which she had), the evidence to support it isn’t comforting at all. She feels guilty as well as sad when Tessa reaches out and squeezes her hand.

“Thank you. She spoke very highly of you, thought that you had much better manners than most of your generation. I know that doesn’t sound like high praise, but it is for her.” Tessa drops her hand and returns to the couch. She’s distracted, and it makes Louise note how much attention she usually pays to whoever she’s interacting with.

“I should never have taken her here,” Tessa announces. “It could have been the travelling, or the stress- “

“The doctor said these things just happen, you can’t predict them,” Adam reminds her.

Kaitlyn puts her arm around Tessa. “You did the best you could to protect her, and to take care of her. No one could have done more. She lived a long, full life, and she died knowing that she was loved. I- I don’t think you could ask for anything else.”

“Everyone who’s ever loved me is dead now,” Tessa whispers.

“That’s not true.” Kaitlyn is trying not to cry, “You have so many friends who love you, who think the world of you. I’m right here, and I love you so much.”

“We’re not really alive though, are we? Humans are born, and they live, and they love, and they die, and we remain. Damned. Subsisting. Parasites. As the world goes on, and on, and on, and on.” Her voice breaks further on each ‘on’. “And if we are lucky enough to die, what awaits us then? Is there a place for us? I- I’ve done bad things, even if I did them for good reasons. I don’t deserve to go to the same place as Eleanor, as- as… Not like this.” Her fingers are tugging at her sleeves. “Maybe there is nothing. For anyone. Maybe it’s all just futile, the whole thing.”

Tessa stands up abruptly and makes her way past Louise, she’s heading towards the door when Scott takes her hand. It’s like they’re frozen until he squeezes her hand, says, “Tess, Tess,” and tugs her to him.

They fit perfectly, as if two halves of a whole. Scott is resting his head against Tessa’s and rubbing a hand over her back as she sobs. “I don’t know what happens after, but I like to think they’re all together somewhere.”

Ashley leaves the mug down on the table with a nod at Scott, before making for the hall with Adam on her heels. Louise follows a few seconds later. Kaitlyn remains seated on the couch.

Ashley and Adam are having a strangely heated discussion in hushed voices, something about whether Ashley should make whatever Tessa had requested now, but Louise isn’t paying attention. Her eyes keep returning to the entwined figures in the living room, breathing as one. Until Kaitlyn joins them in the hall, closing the door behind her.

“I’m going to start looking through the brochures the man at the funeral home gave us, I think Tessa left them upstairs,” Kaitlyn informs them.

“I should probably go,” Louise says, “give Tessa some space.”

Adam turns his gaze towards her, away from Ashley who he’d been frowning at. “I’ll join you. Ash has everything under control here, apparently.”

There’s an awkward silence then until Louise tells Ashley that she will see her soon, and leaves. She doesn’t want to hang around while Scott is comforting Tessa. She’s glad that he can help her, but it’s confusing, and complicated. It’s all so very complicated.

Thankfully Adam doesn’t seem to want to discuss any of it either so they spend the drive to the shop and the rest of the afternoon talking about magic.

 

*****

_October 1888_

Tessa is delicately removing the white flowers from her hair when her mother comes bursting in the door. She would hate for them to be crushed while she and Scott are travelling.

“Oh Tessa, I cannot believe you have slept your last night in this house.” She has been most sentimental for the past number of days.

Tessa continues with her task of carefully pressing the flowers into her copy of _Pride and Prejudice_. Mrs Moir had picked them for her, lily of the valley, carnations, and magnolia blooms, all from her lovely garden in Ilderton. She and Scott will be living in the large house there (it had encountered a great number of additions after “the railway money came in,” Mrs Moir had candidly told her) for a short spell after their honeymoon. The new house in London that the Moirs have bought them as a wedding gift is yet to be completed.

She watches in the mirror as her mother takes a sip from the glass of sherry she had brought upstairs with her from the wedding breakfast. “It’s thanks to you we will remain in this house.”

“Pardon?!” Tessa closes the book.

“Oh,” her mother puts a hand to her mouth. “I did not intend to tell you that. You see, Tessa, your father has made some ill-advised financial decisions and we have been living, well, beyond our means.” She arises and walks to Tessa’s side, placing a hand on her shoulder. “But now you are married into one of the richest families in Ontario, in all of Canada I should say, and all will be well. Mr Moir was so grateful for your father’s help with gaining the government’s support for the new line, and then Scott proposed to you but three days afterwards.”

Tessa has always known why her mother wanted her to marry Scott, she had made it clear from the very beginning, and she had suspected his mother was involved in her scheme, but she had thought that the plan had ended with bringing them together and encouraging their courtship.

“Don’t look so glum, darling. He is such a sweet boy, and you have all your lives to learn to care for another.” Tessa believes she’s been half in love with Scott ever since the first night they danced together. “Now, let me help you out of you dress. You must be leaving soon.”

She had been loath to remove the ivory bridal gown with its intricate lacework that she so loved, but now it feels sullied, a symbol of a business transaction rather than the future. And yet… When Tessa thinks of the calendar of events that preceded Scott’s proposal, she recalls her arm tight in the crook of his as they meandered along the paths in his mother’s garden, how bashful he had been to show her the little village he came from, and his delight in introducing her to all the townspeople at the Ilderton Summer Fair. More vivid still is the memory of the dance that followed the fair, so much freer and less structured than that of the London balls, and how he never left her side the entire night. That is Tessa’s red letter day three nights before he had asked her to marry him. He kissed her when she said yes, a man’s kiss, not that of a boy, and Tessa had felt as if she was on the edge of the world, teetering on the precipice of territory unknown.

Yes, Scott may have been encouraged to marry her for her name, or her family’s connections, but from what she knows of him he would never agree to a lifelong commitment for gain alone. He may not feel as strongly as she does, but he is not indifferent to her, and with time his feelings may match hers. In any case, the die is now cast. Tessa caresses the lace on the bodice of her dress.

“You will keep it safe until the new house is ready, won’t you, Mamma? It and the veil?”

“You sound so like your sister. When have I ever let damage come to a gown?”

Tessa so wished Jane had been able to attend the wedding today, but she was on her own honeymoon trip to Europe. Her letters were full of the wondrous sights they had witnessed, all signed Mrs. Jordan in an overly emphatic hand. Tessa would dearly love to travel there, but she knows that the plans to expand the railway company, and Scott’s importance in their creation, will prevent them from travelling too far.

As her mother quickly secures Tessa’s travelling dress, she broaches a topic Tessa would rather not discuss. “Now, I must talk with you about your wifely duties.”

Tessa has an idea, mainly gleaned from novels and her friends’ gossip, though she still cannot quite grasp how it all works. She had tried to borrow a book about anatomy from the library but the librarian refused, telling her it was not appropriate reading material for a young lady and trying to persuade her to read that ghastly poem _The Angel in the House_. She is not opposed to learning more about what awaits her, but not from her mother.

“It is a woman’s greatest desire to welcome children to the world, and to do so one must engage in activities that may not be entirely congenial. I am sure Scott will treat you with the utmost care, and after some time, the experience may even become a pleasant one. The best advice I know is what my mother told me: close your eyes and think of Canada.”

“Canada?!” Tessa repeats. “Why Canada?”

“Why, because you are going to populate our great nation with its future leaders!” her mother replies, placing Tessa’s bonnet firmly on her head, and tying it with a flourish. “Now, it is time for you to go. Your trunk is already in the carriage.”

Tessa glances around her room, and is gripped with a sudden, strong resistance to leaving. Is she truly prepared to depart from the place of her girlhood? Her mother tugs her towards the door as she dons her kid gloves. She feels as though she wants to turn back all the while as she makes her way down the upstairs hall, and then when they reach the top of the stairs Scott is waiting for her at the bottom and the weight is gone. She can be so nervous - about him, about the future, and then when he smiles at her all the anxiety dissipates.

She finds herself almost skipping down the stairs, and when she reaches him he bows and offers her his arm, “Mrs. Moir.”

Tessa laughs, and then covers her mouth because her mother will surely scold her for emitting such a loud noise, one unbefitting of a lady. However, her mother merely smiles, and continues to do so through all the goodbyes to the Virtues and Moirs who are congregating in the hall, right up until the moment when Tessa and Scott are about to open the door.

“Tessa?” her mother calls, voice slightly choked. “Be sure to write, dear.”

“Yes, Mamma,” she promises, and then they make their leave.

Scott opens the door to the carriage for her and holds her hand as she steps into it. Once they are moving she asks, “May I finally know our destination now?” All her attempts at pestering him, his brothers, and her mother who had arranged her trunk for her, have failed. She has a suspicion it could be the cottage her family summers at on Lake Huron.

“All will be revealed soon.” He winks, and it pricks somewhere within her that only he has ever reached. A feeling mists over her, quite like how she felt on the last occasion on which they had seen each other before today, when they had hidden away in the copse towards the back of the Moir property and his hands had softly stroked up and down the sides of her seersucker blouse as they kissed. She blushes at the memory, and reddens more at the realisation that the time of chaperoning is over. Does that mean that the thoughts Tessa has late at night, when she wonders about the subject her mother had attempted to muddle through, are now appropriate? Is a lady allowed to want?

Scott clasps her hand in his, and rubs his thumb over the buttons on her glove. She wants to feel his skin on hers. “You will find out where we are going very soon, Tessa, I promise.” She smiles and grips his hand tighter to reassure him. She can feel the nervous energy flowing through him into her. “I hope you will enjoy it.”

“I will.” She will be with him.

The carriage comes to a halt and Scott kisses her cheek quickly before alighting. When he helps her descend out onto the street, she sees that they are at the train station.

“I know you would have loved to see Europe, and someday I will take you there, but for now Canada will have to do.” He appears almost shy now. “How would you like to go to Vancouver?”

“Vancouver!” The farthest away Tessa has been from home is to visit her relatives in Detroit. “We will see the whole country!”

The excitement in her voice infects her husband ( _husband_ ) who grins. “Yes, a grand adventure. We travel to Sudbury tonight and then board the transcontinental line tomorrow. I managed to persuade my father to let me go for so long by telling him I could audit the service.” He takes her arm and guides her towards the train.

“The journey takes a week or so, yes?” That is quite a long time aboard a train.

“Yes, but we will make stops in hotels along the way. I would not expect you to sleep on a train for six nights in a row.” He seems quite discomfited by the idea.

“I am sure the train is most comfortable,” she says.

They do not even need to present tickets to the conductor, he merely waves them onto the train, almost bowing to them.

They have a first-class carriage to themselves and Scott busies about waiting on her to remove her bonnet and gloves and recommending she sit on the side facing the direction the train will be moving.

“I have travelled on a train before.” She moves her hands across the table to meet his and interlaces their fingers. The action makes her feel rather bold. He smiles and squeezes in response. “If you were to sit beside me, we would share the same view.” She worries he will not hear her tentative voice over the engines that are roaring to life, but he joins her, still with a firm hold on one hand. “You can teach me all about trains.”

Scott is evidently less interested in the trains themselves than the opportunities they offer. He speaks with such enthusiasm about how the transcontinental line will connect the entire country, building links between communities and creating employment. By the time they arrive at Sudbury station Tessa feels quite passionate about it all too.

The journey to the hotel is a short one and it is not until Scott goes to speak with the concierge that Tessa remembers the import of this night. She wonders if it has crystallised for him too, because when he returns to her he seems uncommonly nervous.

“Tessa, do you wish to have supper, or, ah, the room will be prepared soon. They have taken our trunks up.”

“Supper? I, I could eat some supper.” She would quite like to have something to do while they wait to go upstairs.

“Excellent.” He takes her arm and all seems fine once more until they are seated in the hotel’s dining room and for the first time they are both silent.

“The hotel is very elegant,” Tessa says. In truth, it is a little ostentatious for her liking, but she senses Scott could do with a little reassurance.

He smiles, albeit still somewhat nervously. “Good. I want only the best for you.”

She tries to hold on to that sweet sentiment as they continue in their clumsy attempts at conversation. What if they have discussed any matters they might share common interest in during their courtship and now their marriage will be awkward and silent?

Tessa refuses the offer for dessert because she cannot bear to prolong the experience. No matter how nervous she may feel about what her grandmother had always referred to as deflowering (and then been scolded for discussing such a subject), it must somehow be better than this.

They wander up the first staircase and then all of a sudden Scott quickens his pace and they march up the second set of stairs. Once they reach the door to their room he lifts her up, one arm under her legs and the other around her waist.

“Scott!” She tightens her arms around him.

“I have to carry you over the threshold!”

“That is at our home, not in a hotel!”

“Well, consider this our practice.” She laughs into his neck as he opens the door and carries her in.

She laughs louder when after shutting the door with his foot he stumbles a little when depositing her on the bed, falling into her in the process.

“I could have dropped you!” he admonishes.

“You wouldn’t.” Tessa touches his face, so close to hers now. “I trust you.”

The mood shifts then, as the realisation dawns on them that they are here, alone, on a bed. Scott kisses her, softly, and then teases his tongue against hers before standing up. “I, ah, do you wish to…”

Tessa nods.

“There is a dressing room where I can change,” he gestures towards a door to his left. “Do you need any assistance? I can ask for a maid or- “

“No help required.” Her mother’s lady maid had left service to be married a year or so earlier and even before her departure Tessa most often dressed herself.

Scott places a kiss to her forehead and makes his exit from the main bedroom. Tessa lays down for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then rises and begins to change. Her clothes are thankfully simple to remove even though her hands have a slight shake. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she washes at the handbasin after she takes off her corset. Her hands go to the red weals on her skin, the wedding gown had necessitated a particularly narrow waist. The new nightgown she will wear tonight is of a similar shade and also has lacework at the neck and wrists. After she slips it over her head she attends to the task of taking down her hair. There are a great many pins to remove before she can begin the hundred strokes that her mother claims are necessary every night.

Scott is still yet to appear (how long does it take for a man to undress?) and she begins to feel quite nervous. What had been anticipation minutes earlier is now more akin to apprehension. In miniscule script at the bottom of one of her latest letters from Europe Jane had told her that, yes, the first time was a little painful, but matters improved thereafter.

Tessa spies that the maid who unpacked for her has left her violet water on the dressing table. She dabs a little onto her neck and wrists. After she presented him with a handkerchief she embroidered for him Scott had mentioned how much he appreciated that it smelled like her.

She hears the door to the dressing room open and shut, and turns around to find him standing still. A living statue with his chiselled jawline and the strong arms outlined under his nightshirt. Tessa cannot quite believe that he is hers.

“You are… so beautiful.” The reverence with which he says this sends her mind astray. She, the most articulate of young ladies, is at a loss for what to say. Scott gently touches her hair, letting his fingers flow down the long locks. “I love it like this, down and free.”

Love. A word she has longed to hear from him, if not quite in the way she wants most.

The lamp on the dressing table flickers. “Should I put it out?” she asks.

“No,” he answers quickly. “I would… I would like to see you.”

Yes. She runs her teeth over her lower lip and nods.

“Tessa, if you are not comfortable, or you do not wish to- to- “

“We must. If we do not… we would not be properly married.” A lack of consummation had been a significant plot point in a frivolous novel she had read recently.

“I want to take care of you, I do not…”

She leans closer to him and captures him with a kiss. It is usually he who joins their lips together, the only other time she had been so bold was when he had remarked that he could not comprehend why people were so disapproving of ladies attending university. Scott draws her in tight against his frame and walks them backward towards the bed. He hesitates at the foot of it and she releases herself from his arms to lay back and tug him down on top of her.

Kissing him is so different like this, with only thin cotton between their chests, the hard plane of his so close to the softness of hers. She tangles her fingers in his hair and he presses his hips against hers. Her body has an urge to move closer and faster, but would that seem wanton? She feels wanton, as if she is drunk on his mouth, his hands, the way his… manhood? there must be a better word than that… how it feels only a few layers above the part of her which seems to want him most.

“Tessa? May I?” He places his hand on the hem of her nightdress.

“Yes.”

His hands skims against her drawers. She should have thought to remove them. She reaches underneath and helps him pull them off.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, his cheeks red. “I have never…”

Tessa smiles. She had not known what to expect of him, and the knowledge that he is only hers sends a surge of pride through her. “We may learn together.”

Scott crashes his lips against hers, and then he moves one hand up her bare thigh until he is right there, dipping a finger inside her. He strokes it in and out, and Tessa wishes he would be stronger, faster with that action. He withdraws his finger just as she is beginning to feel a hum of pleasure. She hopes he has not been discomfited by the wetness. She has never felt like this before.

He moves closer, positioning his hips beside hers, and he looks up at her, as if to ascertain whether he should continue. She nods, and he pushes in. His finger was much smaller and Tessa has to force her eyes shut so as to distract herself from the ache as her body adjusts.

“I am so sorry, Tessa, I don’t want to hurt you.” He places soft kisses all about her face.

She opens her eyes. “Please don’t worry, I feel quite well.” It isn’t a lie. The sting isn’t so bad now and she feels so safe in his arms.

She kisses him soundly and he begins to move in her. Tessa thinks back on her mother’s advice to close her eyes and think of Canada and it sounds so foreign to her. Why would she close her eyes when Scott’s kind ones are gazing into hers, and how could she think of anything else than the joining of their bodies as one? A true union.

And then it is over almost as soon as it began. Scott garbles out her name and collapses down on her chest, spilling within her. Is this really what all the fuss is about? Tessa feels like she has begun reading a book only for it to be taken away from her.

He kisses her neck and then pulls out of her. He rises from the bed without a word and she feels bereft. Was it disappointing for him? He returns with a cloth and begins to clean her up ever so gently. He is so very sweet to her. She runs her hand up and down his arm.

“My brothers said that, ah, for a lady it is… more pleasurable with some, ah, experience. I am sorry if it was not…”

She raises herself up and kisses him. The tension leaves his body as he wraps his arm around her. If the more carnal aspects of their marriage may take time this is already perfect.

 

Over the next ten days they traverse a country. Tessa thinks that no map could ever convey how vast the land is. Journeying from the more familiar landscape of Ontario she sees the wide plains of Manitoba and Saskatchewan mutate to the august mountains of Alberta and British Columbia. The leaves are beginning to change and it appears as though the season is turning at speed as they move across the nation.

She becomes quite used to the train, though finds that she cannot read when it is moving without becoming nauseous. Scott offers to read from her well-worn copy of _Persuasion_ when he notices how this disappoints her. His voice is halting at first but then grows in fluency until they are both swept away to Uppercross Hall, Lyme Regis, and Bath. Tessa has never found Wentworth’s letter so affecting as when Scott reads it to her and it is almost as if the words belong to them.

They spend some nights on the train, huddled together in a surprisingly comfortable bunk, but some in hotels. Their nights become more pleasant, the act certainly lasting longer, but Tessa still feels as though some element is missing. She seems to be skirting on the edge of something momentous, but can never quite grasp hold of it. Scott appears determined to make it as enjoyable an experience for her as possible, but she does not know what she needs, and he does not know how to give it to her. Even if she did know, she wouldn’t have the words.

When they finally arrive in Vancouver their plan to go directly to the seaside is foiled by a torrential downpour. Tessa had been so looking forward to reaching the edge of the country they’ve crossed. The heavy rain leaves them drenched merely making the short trip from the carriage to the hotel foyer, necessitating an early change of clothes rather than in preparation for dinner.

No matter how long Tessa spends by the little fire in their bedroom she cannot seem to warm her hands enough for the task of removing her damp blouse which is clinging to her corset. She should have asked the maid to assist her before she left. She is not sure how fit Scott is for the task of helping her remove her garments, but she would hate to develop a chill and ruin their honeymoon.

His eye widen when he opens the door to the dressing room after her knock. Her jacket and skirt are gone and she stands in front of him in her petticoat and sodden blouse. He is only in his undershirt and drawers.

“I am having trouble with, ah…” she gestures towards the upper half of her body, “could you help?”

Scott nods and steps into the room. He removes her blouse with an unexpected ease, gently pulling it over her head before hanging it by the fire with her other wet things. A task he appears most focused on when he asks, “The, ah, corset. Would you like help with it too?”

“Yes, please.” Tessa turns so that her back is to him. She can see him behind her in the looking glass, face deep in concentration. “You only have to untie the laces, you may think of it like a boot.”

“This is nothing like a boot,” he grumbles before setting to his challenge. She sighs in relief when he loosens the laces satisfactorily. “Will I… leave you to dress?”

She loosens the hold her hands have on the front of her corset. “We have some time before we should dress for dinner.” His mouth goes to her neck while he further loosens the laces before taking off the corset entirely.

He strokes the marks on her back and stomach. “Is it painful?”

“One grows used to it, after a time.” His hands seem to soothe the red streaks. Tessa wonders if she should turn so that he may see her properly and not just in the mirror, but she would hate to gaze at disappointment in his eyes.

One of his hands goes up to her breasts, touching them so softly at first, and then more firmly, while the other journeys south. He pauses before he slips it under her drawers. “Is this…?”

“Yes.” The breathiness in her voice is followed by a tiny moan when he rubs against something on his descent. Her hips rise to meet his hand before she can still them.

“Do you like that, Tessa?” His thumb massages this new-found spot and all she can do is murmur, her eyes screwed shut with the effort of not bucking against him. “Don’t stop, sweet girl.” He moves his hips behind hers and she follows his rhythm, feeling him hard against her bottom.

The sensation is wonderful, that pinprick of ecstasy that had teased and eluded her all those times before coming closer and closer. The sounds she is making are probably not ladylike in the least, but in this moment she cannot bring herself to care. Scott is unperturbed by them, continuously whispering in her ear, “Beautiful Tessa… my Tessa,” as he slips one, then two fingers into her entrance. She turns her head so that their lips may meet and it is then that the spark comes to life. It reminds her of the fireworks at the Ilderton Summer Fair, a burst of colour followed by little pulses, and of after his proposal when he kissed her with a purpose she had never witnessed. But most of all is like when they first danced together, except now it is her body made anew, introduced to a whole new world.

“You are magnificent,” he says, spinning her around so that they are chest to chest. She blinks open her eyes and he is looking at her with such sincerity. “I cannot wait to make you feel like that again.”

Tessa laughs, for she cannot wait to feel that way again either, wants him to feel it with her, the two of them dancing into joy together. She lifts his undershirt over his head and then there is a flurry of garments being shoved to the side until they stand bare in front of one another. He pulls her tight against him and they fall onto the bed.

Her eyelids flutter as he enters her and she rolls her hips as he moves deeper. His hand reaches in between them to that nub above her entrance and soon she is alight again, his release coming right after hers.

They lie tangled together after, hands exploring, and she feels delightfully languid and louche. She could never tire of kissing him. “When do we need to dress?” she asks, in a tone somewhat lacking in enthusiasm.

“Never. We shall stay here forever.”

She giggles. “That seems rather impractical.”

“We will have food sent up. We already have your books and a deck of cards.”

“We travelled such a long way. The landscape here is beautiful, they say.”

“I will show you all you want to see. But not now, Tess.”

“Not now,” she assures him, tightening her embrace. She has always been Tessa, her father thinking Theresa too popish a name, and her mother banning Jane from the use of Tess because she thought it common. Tessa loves the sound of it from Scott’s lips, she likes the idea that she may be someone different to him than she is to everyone else, that perhaps he sees her as she truly is.

 

(They go to the sea the next day, and visit other pretty views, but in the end they experience rather less of Vancouver than originally intended. Tessa has no regrets.)

*****

 

Louise doesn’t spend a lot of time at the Moir house in the days after Eleanor’s death. Homes shrouded in grief always make her feel so small. Adam and Ashley come and spend time with her in the flower shop and she talks to Scott intermittently on the phone. She speaks with Tessa only once, when she calls her to offer to do the flowers for the funeral. Tessa is so grateful that it almost makes Louise cry, as does the absence in her voice.

After she arranges the flowers in the old London church where Eleanor will be laid to rest Louise drives to the Moir house to deliver a wreath for Tessa to lay on the grave. There’s a full moon, and Louise wonders if she should be taking advantage of it to practise her magic.

Tessa doesn’t reply when she arrives so she texts Scott and he comes out to the small delivery van to help her. They make small talk about the funeral plans as they go through the quiet house and into the kitchen. Louise is placing the wreath in the farmhouse sink when Scott says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. I know this is a weird situation, but Tessa…”

“It’s fine. She needs support.” Louise isn’t the type of person who’s going to be jealous over her boyfriend supporting an ex after the death of a loved one. She isn’t. “And you’re the best person to give it to her because you were there for her before, after, um…”

“That’s the thing though. I wasn’t.” His voice is so bleak. “If I had been…”

The possibility hangs in the air and then seems to expand, oppressing the room. Louise fixes up a lily of the valley that’s trying to escape from the arrangement. “I’m not going tomorrow. I don’t want there to be too many people for Tessa to try and have to explain to the family. And I have work to do at the shop.”

“I am,” Scott says, like this might not have been something she was assuming. “If that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay.” When has she ever made a demand of him, or tried to stop him from doing something? She’s not holding him back.

“Eleanor was family, you know, in a weird way. Her grandmother was my favourite of Tessa’s relatives, Tessa’s too. And… I’m not sure if I’ve told you this, but there have been times when Tessa has…”

Scott stops when the door from outside opens, letting in a swathe of moonlight. It takes Louise a moment to recognise Tessa when she steps in, her hair is down and she’s dressed in just a sleeveless white nightgown, with a blue shawl hung haphazardly around her arms. The nightgown is old-fashioned with the lace around the collar, but a little on the short side, stopping a few inches above her knees. Scott is transfixed.

“Oh!” Tessa starts when she sees them, unravelling the soft shawl a little and wrapping it around herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here. I just, ah, went out to clear my head.”

Louise would swear that Scott hasn’t blinked. “I came to give you the wreath for tomorrow. Everything else is ready at the church.” She points to the sink and Tessa goes to examine the flowers.

“It’s beautiful, Louise, thank you so much.” She sounds more like herself now, more present. She comes towards them. “I’m so grateful for all your help, I know I haven’t been the best at expressing it.”

“It’s a difficult time.” The moonlight is shining in from the window almost directly onto Tessa’s head, and her hair seems to shimmer. “I didn’t know your hair was that long, I’ve only seen it up.”

Scott lifts his hand, pauses, and then runs it through his own hair. “It’s almost as long as it was… back then.”

Tessa toys with the ends and looks towards him. “I suppose it is.”

And it’s in that moment, watching them stare at one another, in a time or place apart, that Louise knows whatever she has with Scott must end. Enough is enough. There is no place for her here, in the path of some powerful force she can’t quite understand.

“I hope the funeral goes well tomorrow, I’ll be thinking about you.” She wonders if Scott has told Tessa he’s going. “Scott will be there.”

Tessa turns her gaze from Louise to him. “You will?”

“Yes. As long as that’s what you want.”

She nods, and then frowns. “We need to do something about your hair.”

“I can tidy it up.” It is getting scraggly.

“My mother is buried in that churchyard, Scott.” Her words are firm but there’s a smile almost breaking through.

“Oh. Right. We should definitely cut it.”

Tessa laughs, a little scratchily. “You wash it and I’ll...” Her voice switches to formality, “Louise, you should do it. You have an artistic eye.”

Does Tessa mean with the flowers? She’s usually just copying old arrangements of her grandma’s. “No, I think it’s best if you do it. I’m not the best with scissors, honestly, it’s not that big a deal with flowers, but I wouldn’t want to take any chances with hair, or necks.”

“Well, if you’re sure, I can go get my scissors.” Tessa smiles at them both and pulls the baby blue wrap more securely around herself before walking past them.

Scott waves his hand towards the fridge. “Do you want a drink or anything? I got that apple juice you like.”

He’s very thoughtful for a guy who seems unaware, at least on a conscious level, that he’s still in love with his ex-wife while dating her. “Thanks, but I should be heading home.” She doesn’t want to be around for a slice of domestic life with Tessa and Scott. She wonders whether she should talk to him now, but quickly decides against it. She needs to figure out what to say, and breaking up with someone the day before they attend a funeral seems rather cruel.

They hear noises, and the outside door opens again to reveal Adam talking with his hands and Ashley cradling a jar.

“Oh, hey Louise! If we had known you’d be here we’d have invited you to come out with us. All about magic under a full moon!” Adam prattles on while Ashley carefully puts the jar in the freezer.

“We could do something together now if you like, Louise,” Ashley’s calm is making Adam seem hyper-excited.

“Thanks, but I was just telling Scott that I’m going to drive back home now. Tessa’s going to cut his hair!”

Adam throws his hands in the air. “Thank Hecate!” He walks over to Louise and puts an arm around her, “I’ll walk you out.”

Scott mumbles something about washing his hair and hugs her somewhat half-heartedly (maybe he’s been doing that for a while and she just hadn’t realised).

When they’ve reached the van Adam says, “Are you okay? You seem a little quiet.”

“I’m fine. Just… working through some stuff.”

Adam narrows his eyes and nods, and she thinks he probably knows exactly what she’s thinking about. “You should come by here tomorrow after work.”

“I have a committee meeting about the Ilderton Summer Fair, but after that would be good.”

“Great, we can talk ‘stuff’ out. And,” he pauses, “if you’re alright with it I was thinking it would be nice for us to be there when Tessa gets back from the funeral. I know the others are going with her, but, still, coming back to an empty house sounds tough.”

Louise thinks she can remember her mom saying that coming home after the funeral had been one of the hardest parts. “Yes. That’s a really good idea. I’ll be there.”

Adam smiles and hugs her quickly before she gets into the van and takes off. She drives slowly because she’s not entirely comfortable in the larger vehicle, especially at night. This gives her some time to think, which she’s not sure she’s all that happy about.

Louise isn’t quite sure how she feels yet, it’s a little more like relief than sadness. Maybe she had known for a while that things were over and it had just taken her brain some time to catch up. Things had been different ever since Tessa came, ever since that night in the woods really. If she’d been really sensible, she would have ended it then. But she doesn’t regret it. If she hadn’t met Scott, and then met Tessa, who knows when she would have found out about being a witch, if ever. She mightn’t have got her fun, easy summer romance, but she had learned something more important. And it wasn’t like she could be mad with Scott and Tessa for not having figured out their shit in the 130 years they’d had. Well, maybe she was a little unimpressed by that, but they hadn’t purposefully drawn her into it.

The road is deserted until she’s about to turn into town and she sees a man running, wearing a bunch of those reflective armbands all down his arm. She realises it’s Colin MacCormack and almost shrinks into her seat. There’s no way he isn’t going to recognise her driving this van and she looks a mess. She’d put on an old UBC t-shirt and leggings so that she wouldn’t damage any of her nice clothes moving all the flowers.

She slows down the van and rolls down the window because there’s really no getting out of this. “Hey Colin! How are you?”

He reacts a lot more calmly than Louise would have if a van pulled up beside her when she was on a late-night run. “Louise McCormick! I’m good, what about you?”

She’s a little confused by the use of her full name, she’s not sure she’s ever heard him call her that before. They’d made a big deal of letting everyone at skating camp know that they weren’t related each summer, perhaps always leading up to that last summer she’d spent here which had ended with their first kiss. “Uh, fine. You’re back from the hockey camps?”

“Yeah, just today.”

“Oh, good. Do you want a ride home, or do you want to keep running?” Louise has never seen the attraction.

“I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

“It’s not even ten minutes there and back. Get in the van.” She definitely sounds like a creepy van murderer now.

Colin slides into the front seat beside her. “I’m a little sweaty, sorry.”

“Don’t worry.” It’s a good look for him. His hair is a little longer now too, which she likes.

“Do people want flowers delivered this late?” he asks.

“No, I had a church to decorate in London, and then I visited some friends.” She’s pretty sure it was Colin who had dared her to run past the Moir house when she was younger. “You know, I’ve actually been in that house you told me was haunted multiple times now.” He mightn’t have been all that wrong.

“Oh yeah, Mom was saying you were dating that Moir guy who’d come to town.” He’s looking straight ahead at the road.

Carol really does know everything happening in Ilderton. “Not for much longer,” she says, because of course the guy she’s been holding a torch for is the one who needs to know that information. It’s definitely not something that should be discussed with Scott first.

Colin turns to her, frowning, “Is he treating you badly?”

“No, it’s just… complicated?” How does she even begin to explain? “He’s living with some friends, and one is his ex, and, I, uh, I guess they have a lot of history.”

“Do you think there’s something going on between them?”

“No, I don’t think they’d do anything when he’s dating someone else, well, me. But – emotionally? I think they need to figure some stuff out.”

“He shouldn’t be dating you if he still has unfinished business with someone else, especially someone who’s living in his house?! That’s not fair.” He’s right.

“Yeah.” They’re driving past the Ilderton rink now, meaning they’re almost at his home. “I haven’t been able to skate as much as I’d planned since coming here.”

“You should come help out with classes. The kids will be so excited, you’re basically an Olympian.”

She bursts out laughing, “I made it to Nationals out of BC Sectionals as a juvenile, that’s very far from being an Olympian.”

“You skated on Olympic ice in Vancouver!”

“Oh my God, as a sweeper! I just picked up flowers and stuffed animals!” It had been so exciting, being so close to all those amazing athletes.

“You still skated on it.”

“I did.” She stops in front of his house. The hall is still bright and she thinks about how nice it is to have someone to leave a light on for you. “It would be nice to see you teach.” She can turn around and look at him properly now she’s no longer driving. He’s a lot more distracting this way.

“I mainly work with the hockey kids, my mom still does the figure skating lessons. We’ll have to be careful she doesn’t try and pair us up for ice dance again.” His eyes really are the prettiest blue she’s ever seen, deep and serious, but so bright when he laughs.

“I think that ship has sailed.” She had always enjoyed it so much when they skated together, it was comforting to have someone at her side, to not be out there on her own.

“Pity.” He stretches and she none too subtly checks him out. He’s filled out a lot from the short guy who had kissed her behind a popcorn stand. “I should let you go home. You probably have to open the shop in the morning.”

“It’s been so good to see you. We should meet up properly now you’re back.”

“I’d really like that.” He smiles, and she can feel her cheeks growing red. “And remember, Louise, this guy shouldn’t be stringing you along if he has feelings for someone else, no matter how complicated it is.”

She doesn’t think Scott has been stringing her along, it’s not like he’s been promising her things he hasn’t delivered on, it’s maybe just that whatever he feels for Tessa will always be stronger than anything he might feel for her. And, sure, that stings a little, but theirs was never going to be a great romance. “Do you believe in fate? That two people are meant to be together?”

Colin considers it, and then says, “No. I don’t think anything is meant to be in life. We make choices, and they have consequences, and then we make more choices. And some people have many more choices open to them than others, but… I want to believe that I can make a difference, you know? To someone at least.”

Louise really wants to kiss him. He looks so passionate, and the intensity makes his eyes shine bright. It surprises her how much she wants it, like it’s something she needs, not just something that might be fun. But she’s still dating Scott, so she reaches out her hand and squeezes Colin’s. “You will. I know you will.”

He grins back at her and again she wonders. But then he squeezes back and lets go. “Thanks, Lulu. I’ll call into the shop in the next few days, is that okay?”

“Great,” she replies. Her overdue break-up should have happened by then.

She watches him go inside, and then she drives home to a flower shop, a cat, and some magic books.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to M for her Canadian geography lessons, to do_not-confess for her Victorian knowledge, to peacefulboo for saving me from myself, and to toomucherin for her help in killing off Eleanor (gone but not forgotten).
> 
> I'm not sure when the next chapter will be ready because I have some holiday writing to get to first, but hopefully it won't be too long :)


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